Redmond staff brief council on stricter NPDES stormwater permit, retrofit targets and operational costs

Aaron Burt, Redmond’s public works director, introduced a stormwater 101 briefing Oct. 8 and turned the presentation to staff who oversee stormwater operations and the city’s NPDES program.

Anne Dettelbach, the city’s NPDES program administrator, explained NPDES is the permit tool under the federal Clean Water Act delegated in Washington to the Department of Ecology and noted that Redmond’s municipal permit for Western Washington was reissued effective Aug. 1, 2024. She highlighted new requirements that will affect city planning and the capital improvement program, including stronger overburden community engagement and an Ecology‑assigned stormwater retrofit facility planning requirement that sets retrofit acreage targets the city must address.

Ernest "Ernie" Fix, maintenance and operations manager, gave an operations overview. He said Redmond must inspect and maintain a large asset base — "over 11,000 catch basins" and roughly 600 treatment and flow control facilities — and described tools staff use to manage the work, including Lucidie work‑management software. Fix said an operations crew of 10 technicians spends roughly 80% of its time on permit‑driven work — about 17,000 labor hours per year — and staff cited multi‑year results: more than 33,000 basin inspections, almost 8,000 basin cleanings/repairs, over 3,000 facility inspections and almost 300 repairs; responses to roughly 900 incidents produced more than 6,000 tons of material removed from the system.

Anne said Redmond averages between 150 and 200 incident responses in a typical year and that the permit triggers a special notification to Ecology when stormwater discharges cause or contribute to violations of state water quality standards. "We work very hard to not submit those," she said, and later estimated there were around 25 incidents in a recent period that may have caused or might have caused violations and fewer than 10 formal Ecology notification letters per year on average.

Staff reviewed related programs that reinforce compliance: paired watershed and street‑sweeping studies, a pollution‑prevention assistance (PPA) program for businesses, and a planned stormwater and surface water system plan with a draft expected in 2025 and final in 2026. Scott McCrory was named as the city’s illicit‑discharge detection and elimination (IDDE) coordinator; staff said he coordinates regional response and outreach and provided a 24/7 spill response number: (425) 556‑2868.

Council members asked about local hotspots (Gun Club Creek), regional collaboration with King County (Monticello Creek examples) and whether firefighting foam contains PFAS; staff confirmed Redmond Fire Department foam does not contain PFAS.

What’s next: staff will return to council with watershed study findings and a stormwater & surface water system plan that will inform CIP retrofit planning and compliance actions.