ecoRI News reporter Colleen Cronin speaks with Rhode Island’s director of environmental management, Terry Gray, about some new stormwater initiatives. She also gets Terry’s take on what went well — and what didn’t — at the recently concluded 2024 legislative session.

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Please share any questions you want Colleen to ask Terry Gray on our July episode by emailing her at [email protected].

This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Colleen Cronin
Welcome to the Blab Lab, a podcast from reporters of ecoRI News where we unpack the critical environmental issues facing southern New England. Today I am here with Terry Gray, director of the Department of Environmental Management, to talk about one of my favorite subjects. And I wonder if it’s one of Terry’s favorite or least favorite subjects, stormwater. So, Terry, thanks so much for coming on the pod.

Terry Gray
Oh, it’s great to be back, Colleen.

Colleen Cronin
I’m excited to talk about from what are, I feel like in my reporting, it was the big thing that I didn’t know would be such a big deal on environmental reporting that now feels like basically everything I write about feels like stormwater is sort of related in some way. So just to start off, I know our audiences know a lot about the environment. But can your kind of just tell us what stormwater is.

Terry Gray
So, stormwater is pretty much what you would expect it to be, which is rain, or melted snow. And as it gets on the ground, and in flows through hard surfaces, like rooftops or parking lots, it picks up material, so it could pick up chemicals, it could pick up oil, it could pick up fertilizers, it could pick up litter, and as it flows downhill towards waterbodies, it carries that pollution to the water bodies and creates water quality problems.

Colleen Cronin
So, how do we regulate stormwater here in Rhode Island?

Terry Gray
I think the biggest thing is to try and look at different construction projects that are out there, we have a series of different stormwater permits that we issued to different entities. So, it starts with the big drainage systems. And the biggest one in the state is operated by the Department of Transportation. And it covers all the state roads and state highways. But a lot of our cities and towns also have smaller systems. And these are the drainpipes under the roads that carry stormwater from point A to point B. So, you don’t experience flooding, which is a big challenge as well. There’s about 42 of the systems in the state that we regulate. But we also regulate construction projects. Because when people are disturbing properties and disturbing the land, they can create opportunities for erosion and other pollution. And then the final thing is we regulate certain classes of industry, because they have a higher potential to create stormwater pollution. So, one class is scrap metal yards. And because they have a lot of material on site that may have oils or chemicals on it, when that stuff is exposed to rain, water or snow melt, it can create a real potential for pollution.

Colleen Cronin
So, one thing that always comes up with stormwater is like the idea of pervious versus impervious surface, does that end up coming into the regulations at all?

Terry Gray
Yeah, our biggest goal is to is to really get the stormwater back in the ground. Because the more it flows over the surface of the ground, the more potential it has to pick up things that really don’t help our waterbodies, it also creates a potential for flooding. And, and when you have high-velocity flow, it creates a big potential for erosion.

Colleen Cronin
What is high-velocity flow?

Terry Gray
Picture a stream. And if a stream is relatively flat, then the water slowly flows. And it really doesn’t create that big of an issue. But if it’s really steep, like on a mountainside, the water is ripping downhill. And it’s going to create an erosion, which means it’ll wash out the sides, it’ll carry the soil with it as it goes downhill. And that can create damage to the landscape.

Colleen Cronin
With impervious surface, that that can end up impacting the speed?

Terry Gray
Right, so when you have impervious surfaces, like parking lots or rooftops, the water can’t soak in. So, the water will hit different areas like hillsides, or where there’s an angle internal flow downhill, and it’ll pick up speed. So, when we permit stormwater control measures at properties, we’re really looking for people to control the stormwater on site, and to get it back into the ground. And they use technologies like infiltration basins, which are just like ponds that allow the water to seep into the ground, or tree wells or impervious parking lots, which means the storm water can flow directly through the parking lot back into the ground. We’re really trying to slow things down and get it back on the ground.

Colleen Cronin
So there seems like there’s a lot of different types of projects that could be involved in trying to improve stormwater than. Are there any big ones that are coming up for you guys?

Terry Gray
Well, probably the granddaddy of all stormwater projects is the combined sewer overflows tunnels that are within the Narragansett Bay Commission system. They are giant storage tanks, basically for stormwater and when it rains, the stormwater goes down on into the basins. Unfortunately, it’s an old system. So, stormwater and sewers are combined, which, which is pretty nasty. So, it this flows all down into these tunnels which hold the stormwater until the wastewater treatment plants have the capacity to treat it. So, in the past, when it rained, without the tunneled storage, there would be a big surge of flow. And wastewater treatment plants couldn’t handle that. So, they would have to go into bypass mode.

Colleen Cronin
What is that?

Terry Gray
What that means is there’s discharges to the bay, into our river systems without any treatment, which is pretty nasty. Well, so the goal of the combined sewer system overflow approach is to is to provide some storage again, to slow things down, so that the sewer plants can keep up and treat everything before it gets into our waterways.

Colleen Cronin
So, I have seen, I think, a picture of that big tunnel, and it’s huge. I’m thinking it probably takes a long time, and there’s a lot of money to do it? What was the process? And how long was the process of doing it?

Terry Gray
There are different phases. And it is it has cost over a billion dollars to build out network of tunnels. And there are millions of gallons of storage that are provided. But there’s still unfortunately, a few overflows, but we’re really working on that and trying to try to eliminate that problem.

Colleen Cronin
So then is it rain gardens and the retention bins and things like that, that sort of even prevent that water from getting into the combined sewage overflow?

Terry Gray
Right? So, the places where the water gets into the combined sewer overflow system, our catch basins in the street?

Colleen Cronin
Yep.

Terry Gray
So, if we can keep the stormwater on site and manage the water on site through rain gardens, or stormwater basins or twee tree wells, or other technologies, that it’s not getting into the system overall.

Colleen Cronin
It’s an ongoing challenge, trying to keep up with it, it seems, what are the other problems that you feel like, still need solving or tweaking?

Terry Gray
Well, ironically, from a DEM perspective, our main focus is water quality. But from a neighborhood perspective, a lot of times that first focus is water quantity. And when we get these intense, short, you know, short duration rainstorms, flooding becomes a problem.

Colleen Cronin
Yep.

Terry Gray
Street flooding that sometimes extends into other properties. So, what we’re trying to do is really kind of trying to combine the evaluation of water quality and water quantity and stormwater management so that we’re dealing with flooding in pollution control. At the same time, the big focus is with climate change, we’re getting a lot more of these high intensity short term storms, where we might get three inches in in an hour. But that creates a real management challenge for stormwater.

Colleen Cronin
Yeah. All the different things that I think climate change is making us have to think about and making problems worse. Frank wrote a column pretty recently, Frank Carini, our senior reporter and columnist here at ecoRI News about a stormwater tax based on impervious surface cover, which you were talking about can be a problem and in sort of causing stormwater issues. So, you know, what do you think about that? I know, DEM probably wouldn’t necessarily have a role in that it, might be on the more municipal level. But has that been something you guys have ever talked about trying to instill on the state level?

Terry Gray
So, our focus is all about compliance. And unfortunately, it costs money to comply. And the municipalities are challenged on how they, they can raise that money, a lot of times it’s buried in their public works, budget. So, people don’t really see what the issue is. And there’s no incentive for property owners to really kind of step up and manage their own piece of that puzzle, if you will. What a stormwater tax does, or a stormwater utility district does is it it’s a fee that’s proportional on the stormwater challenge that that your property is presenting. So, you if you have a lot of impervious service, your fee would be higher than somebody that doesn’t have that and they’re doing more to manage their stormwater on-site. So, there’s an incentive built in there for people to take care of their own part of that issue. The other thing is it it’s really visible, and it shows how much a city or town really has to spend to manage the system and it’s not varied in with trash collection and, and the sewer, water fees and other things that might be inherent in a public works budget.

Colleen Cronin
I think that kind of fits into my next question. I think the stormwater you know, like you’re saying on a neighborhood level, the quantity I think becomes a real issue to people because they see the water back up in their yard, I can think of, you know, some places in Cumberland or Johnston seen major flooding. Even my neighborhood, someone knocked on my door from FEMA saying, “Oh, did you have flood damage the last time we had a big storm?” So, I think that’s something people can see. I think the water quality issue becomes maybe a little bit more abstract. But I just recently wrote about Blue Green algal blooms. Can you kind of talk about how stormwater may impact those and then what DM works on to monitor and work on reducing those?

Terry Gray
It all comes down to one thing, and that’s nutrients. And algal blooms, including the blue green or cyanobacteria, algal blooms are fed by nutrients. So, stormwater is there a mechanism that conveys nutrients from neighborhoods to water bodies, it could be anything, it could be somebody that uses excess fertilizer on their yard. It could be pet waste, it could be, it could be leaf and yard waste that have been left around for a while. And when that stuff decays, and then gets washed downstream, it provides like this huge source of food for these eligible items. And they’ll just they’ll just explode.

Colleen Cronin
And that seems like a problem that people literally can see like the blue green algae least looks like pea soup on the water. And that’s a way that maybe some water is impacting them that they can feel.

Terry Gray
I think you’re right, Colleen, you can see it when it’s in the pond. But you can’t see it upstream. And in you can’t see it in the water that’s flowing down the street, it doesn’t look polluted. It looks clean, it looks fresh, but it’s conveying that food that’s going to create that big problem when it when it reaches the ponds and streams.

Colleen Cronin
Before we move on to the sort of next part of the show today. Is there anything else that you want to add about stormwater that we didn’t talk about that is worth mentioning?

Terry Gray
There is. We’re working with the Conservation Law Foundation and the attorney general’s office on a somewhat innovative approach the stormwater control around Mashapaug Pond, which is a waterbody that’s right in an environmental justice community in Providence and Cranston and the pond has a long legacy of industrial pollution from the Gorham Silverworks was right next to it, and then it’s just right in the middle of an industrial park. A lot of the properties in that watershed have been paved for years. And a lot of them have been paved and developed at a point that was prior to our stormwater regulations. So, the innovative approach that we’re using is we’re using a section of the Clean Water Act that allows us to go back in time and say, “Hey, even though you did this before a permit is required, you need to you need to step up and fix the problem now.”

Colleen Cronin
Yep.

Terry Gray
So, we’re working with the city of Providence, the Stormwater Innovation Center, and really trying to develop a system where we get better control the stormwater generated in that in that area, and hopefully improve the water quality in the pond.

Colleen Cronin
I know that the folks at Roger Williams Park are really excited about that, because they’re seeing some resurgence in their wildlife. I just wrote about that.

Terry Gray
Yeah, the cities and the park staff have done incredible work in the park. And Mashapaug is right upstream. So, they can only do so much at the bottom. So, as we move upstream, hopefully we can improve the water quality all through that system.

Colleen Cronin
I read an interesting tidbit when I was writing my most recent story about how water actually leaves Roger Williams Park cleaner than it entered, which is really cool because of all of the sort of green infrastructure that they’ve put in and stuff like that.

Terry Gray
There’s a there’s another neat project in the pipeline where The Nature Conservancy is working on restoring fish passage to up into the park from the Pawtuxet River.

Colleen Cronin
I’ve heard about that.

Terry Gray
Pretty amazing when you think about it. Yeah, it’s been a long time.

Colleen Cronin
So, thank you so much for talking about that. I think stormwater is really important, and it was really interesting to chat about it. And just to kind of move on to something else that’s really been in the news recently, I’ve been off the hook for this because Rob Smith, our other reporter does Statehouse reporting, but I was kind of hoping you could maybe give us like a bit of a “rose, bud, thorn” on the legislative session this year. And for listeners who don’t know “rose” is like something you were maybe glad about, “thorn” is something you wish happened but didn’t, and then “bud” is you know something maybe you’re looking forward to in the in the next session and interpret that as you will if you want to reinterpret it, but that’s sort of what I think of that.

Terry Gray
I’ll start with the roses.

Colleen Cronin
“Roses” that’s good. That’s exciting.

Terry Gray
The big rose that we really got out of this General Assembly session is a budget. And both Governor McKee and the Legislature were very supportive. And believe me, we really appreciate that. In the governor’s budget, we had proposed to get 12 extra people for our Parks program. And that that was approved by the legislature. So that’s a big win for Parks and Recreation. The Legislature also added an extra two positions to help us with forestry management. So that was kind of an unexpected win, but we’ll take it. Yeah, it was really great. There was a lot of discussion about a green bond that’s going to be on the ballot in November, the governor had put forward a green bond that includes I think, total $37 million. There was a lot of debate about that bond when it went through the legislative process. And it came out at I believe, $53 million. There was a lot of funding added by the General Assembly for land conservation, which is a which is a positive.

Colleen Cronin
Maybe instead of doing thorn last, you could do thorn next. So, we end on a positive note.

Terry Gray
We didn’t have any bills that that passed that I would consider a thorn, which is good. There was a very contentious debate about decarbonizing buildings. And really how do we deal with the carbon emissions from heating and building operation? And in the discussion was really, how fast could we do some of that? How involved could we be, there was a lot of education that needed to go on, because a lot of people don’t realize that that buildings are the second largest source of carbon emissions in the state behind transportation.

Colleen Cronin
Yeah, it’s huge.

Terry Gray
So there was a lot of back and forth on how to do that. And what was the right approach, that bill didn’t pass. But what did pass was a resolution that asked the EC4, or the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council to explore building decarb. And really provide some recommendations on what it would take to implement a program like that.

Colleen Cronin
Rob wrote a story about how you know, commissions are actually becoming really effective now, like, there’s some things that have been going in to this sort of in between state before the next session that ended up really being able to be acted upon.

Terry Gray
I think that makes sense, because some of these issues are complicated. And when they first drop, it’s, it gets people thinking a lot of times and people start to think, for instance, what does it take to decarbonize our buildings, and then people get nervous, because there’s a lot of uncertainty. And there’s a lot of the lot, there’s a lot of unknown. So, a legislative commission, lets us drill into that a little bit deeper. And figure out the options, the pros, the cons, and hopefully feed into a veteran form build next year. Yeah. So that’s what we’re hoping for.

Colleen Cronin
Yeah. So maybe that’s one of your buds. But is there anything else that you think maybe there was some progress on didn’t quite make it but maybe it looks better for next year?

Terry Gray
That’s a big one. There’s the there’s the discussion on whether or not Rhode Island should have a bottle bill. That’s a tough one. Yeah, a lot of pros and cons on that one. And how to roll that out. That commission was extended, it really didn’t, didn’t come to fruition this year. One of the bills that we proposed, which I’m really happy past, was authorization to permit the use of e-bikes on some of our bike paths and state properties. So obviously, e bikes are an alternate mode of transportation that we’ve been promoting in our climate world. It seems silly to specifically prohibit those on a lot of our major bike thoroughfares. So, we need to come up with rules to allow that safely. But, but it’s now an option.

Colleen Cronin
Yeah, I know a lot of folks who I’ve spoken to for my transportation, writing, if they’re biking, they are using e-bikes, especially awesome. Older adults, you know, it just makes life easier for them to hop on any bike, they can get a lot farther, right. I just started biking to work and I am very out of shape. So, I understand. I have a ten speed.

Terry Gray
It’s tough time to pick that up.

Colleen Cronin
It is a little tough. We’ll see how a long it lasts, but Terry, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. We also want to thank Vanessa Carlton for letting us use her song “Willows” for our theme song. We record the Blab Lab at LitArts RI in Providence. It’s edited by myself and our publisher Joanna Detz, who also mixes the episode and fixes all of my editing mistakes. If you have any questions, ideas or tips for future podcasts, you can email me at [email protected]. Until next time, you can get more Rhody environmental news at our website.