Kansas City APWA chapter approves updates, single set of stormwater standards for region

The updates to 5600 represent a significant six-year effort to explore modernized stormwater best practices in the Kansas City region, and address both quantity and quality of stormwater drainage in our region's watersheds. The new standards will provide enhanced guidance and incentives to mitigate flood risks and stream erosion, while conserving water quality. Existing stormwater design criteria did not encourage well-designed green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) facilities like bioretention basins to help resolve these issues.

The effort began in 2019 with a 24-member task force developing a sustainable stormwater management vision and principles. The APWA Executive Committee approved the task force recommendations in the fall of 2021, and the planning process has been ongoing since then.

The Section 5600 approval represents integration of the updated 5600 standards with the MARC Best Management Practices (BMP) Manual to protect water quality. The original MARC BMP Manual covered the additional water quality requirements of the Clean Water Act for the past 20 years, the most recent update of which took place in 2012. Many lessons have been learned in stormwater management over the past decades. Both of the existing manuals referenced each other, but this approval represents a true combination of modern standards under a single set of standards.

MARC and the KC Chapter of APWA would like to thank the over 240 stakeholders involved over these past years in the planning process to produce the updated standards, representing municipalities from across the Kansas City region in both Missouri and Kansas.