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In urban and suburban areas, stormwater runoff is a primary stressor on surface waters. Conventional urban stormwater drainage systems often route runoff directly to streams and rivers, thus exacerbating pollutant inputs and hydrologic disturbance, and resulting in the degradation of ecosystem structure and function. Decentralized stormwater management tools, such as low impact development (LID) or water sensitive urban design (WSUD), may offer a more sustainable solution to stormwater management if implemented at a watershed scale. These tools are designed to pond, infiltrate, and harvest water at the source, encouraging evaporation, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, and re-use of stormwater. While there are numerous demonstrations of WSUD practices, there are few examples of widespread implementation at a watershed scale with the explicit objective of protecting or restoring a receiving stream. This article identifies seven major impediments to sustainable urban stormwater management: (1) uncertainties in performance and cost, (2) insufficient engineering standards and guidelines, (3) fragmented responsibilities, (4) lack of institutional capacity, (5) lack of legislative mandate, (6) lack of funding and effective market incentives, and (7) resistance to change. By comparing experiences from Australia and the United States, two developed countries with existing conventional stormwater infrastructure and escalating stream ecosystem degradation, we highlight challenges facing sustainable urban stormwater management and offer several examples of successful, regional WSUD implementation. We conclude by identifying solutions to each of the seven impediments that, when employed separately or in combination, should encourage widespread implementation of WSUD with watershed-based goals to protect human health and safety, and stream ecosystems.

We present a framework to compare water treatment costs to source water protection costs, an important knowledge gap for drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs). This trade‐off helps to determine what incentives a DWTP has to invest in natural infrastructure or pollution reduction in the watershed rather than pay for treatment on site. To illustrate, we use daily observations from 2007 to 2011 for the Bob McEwen Water Treatment Plant, Clermont County, Ohio, to understand the relationship between treatment costs and water quality and operational variables (e.g., turbidity, total organic carbon [TOC], pool elevation, and production volume). Part of our contribution to understanding drinking water treatment costs is examining both long‐run and short‐run relationships using error correction models (ECMs). Treatment costs per 1000 gallons (per 3.79 m3) were based on chemical, pumping, and granular activated carbon costs. Results from the ECM suggest that a 1% decrease in turbidity decreases treatment costs by 0.02% immediately and an additional 0.1% over future days. Using mean values for the plant, a 1% decrease in turbidity leads to $1123/year decrease in treatment costs. To compare these costs with source water protection costs, we use a polynomial distributed lag model to link total phosphorus loads, a source water quality parameter affected by land use changes, to turbidity at the plant. We find the costs for source water protection to reduce loads much greater than the reduction in treatment costs during these years. Although we find no incentive to protect source water in our case study, this framework can help DWTPs quantify the trade‐offs.

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Decentralized stormwater management is based on the dispersal of stormwater management practices (SWMP) throughout a watershed to manage stormwater runoff volume and potentially restore natural hydrologic processes. This approach to stormwater management is increasingly popular but faces constraints related to land access and citizen engagement. We tested a novel method of environmental management through citizen-based stormwater management on suburban private land. After a nominal induction of human capital through an education campaign, two successive (2007, 2008) reverse auctions engaged residents to voluntarily bid on installation of SWMPs on their property. Cumulatively, 81 rain gardens and 165 rain barrels were installed on approximately one-third of the 350 eligible residential properties in the watershed, resulting in an estimated 360 m³ increase in stormwater detention capacity. One surprising result was the abundance of zero dollar bids, indicating even a limited-effort human capital campaign was sufficient to enroll many participants. In addition, we used statistical methods to illustrate the significant role of social capital in forming clusters of adjacent properties that participated in bidding. This indicated that as participants shared their experiences, neighbors may have become more willing to trust the program and enroll. Significant agglomerations of participating properties may indicate a shift in neighborhood culture regarding stormwater management with positive implications for watershed health through the sustained induction of alternate capitals