ABSTRACT
Regardless of the growing public awareness of the environmental impacts of stormwater runoff, government regulation defining requirements for stormwater management remain the most significant driver or potential limitation for design and installation of all stormwater control measures (SCMs). 1 At the time of this writing, many municipalities are found to be in the midst of a paradigm shift for design of stormwater controls. The shift to green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) provides an opportunity for living roofs where green infrastructure (GI) is embraced, and where design manuals offer computational procedures for runoff calculations, but creates challenges where regulatory agencies are slower adopters. A discussion of the regulatory context is warranted, as it forms the basis for the technical objectives adopted by the stormwater designer. It also forms a framework, or set of rules, against which a building or broader development proposal is evaluated in terms of creating and mitigating runoff potential.
