A public meeting on MS4 will be held Aug. 28 in the Salisbury Township Municipal Building.

What's an MS4, you ask?

Good question.

Until recently, public officials, media and the public may have been unaware of the MS4 term, much less Salisbury Township and other Lehigh Valley municipalities are in violation.

Salisbury Township, along with other Lehigh Valley municipalities, received notice June 25 of a 30-day deadline to provide EPA with evidence of compliance.

"They're orders," Salisbury Township Manager Randy Soriano told commissioners at the July 24 township meeting. The topic was not on the agenda. "They came down hard.

"We [Salisbury Township] were cited for education and post-runoff issues," Soriano explained. "It's something the township must deal with."

By consensus, commissioners decided MS4 compliance will be discussed at a workshop 7 p.m. Aug. 28 in the Municipal Building, 2900 S. Pike Ave.

The MS4 order has to do with preventing lawn pesticides, animal manure, residents' cars' used oil and automotive fluids, swimming pool chlorine, household detergents and the like from getting into stormwater systems and, therefore, streams and rivers supplying the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, which includes Lehigh and Delaware valleys.

The EPA could level a $35,000 per day fine against municipalities for noncompliance.

"I don't think they're going to fine anybody. It's a wakeup call," Soriano said.

Soriano said one issue has to do with detention pond maintenance, noting records must be kept. "By the engineer, by staff?" Soriano wondered aloud.

Soriano called the EPA order an unfunded mandate with no funding to support its enforcement.

"That's money that we will need to allocate," Soriano said.

Part of the EPA order is "township officials need to be aware of it," Soriano said.

"We'll use that [the Aug. 28 meeting] as a public outreach awareness," Soriano said.

Soriano said Salisbury Township Director of Public Works John Andreas attended an EPA-sponsored MS4 workshop. Andreas is the designated township official who will oversee MS4 compliance.

"It's not that complicated," reassured Salisbury Township Consulting Engineer David J. Tettemer, Keystone Consulting Engineers, Inc., at the July 28 meeting. "The township is not in noncompliance."

Tettemer said the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection approved MS4 plans of Salisbury and other municipalities but "the EPA wanted more."

Stated EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin in the June 24 letter to municipalities, "Our objective in issuing these orders is to build on the work being done by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and bridge any gaps in making it clear to the municipalities that they need to do a better job of implementing their programs for controlling stormwater runoff."

"It would be good if the township understands what MS4 means because it's going to change the way you're going to look at [housing and commercial] development and runoff," Tettemer said.

EPA recommended education materials and strategies include: brochures, fact sheets, recreation guides, websites, volunteer citizen educators, event participation, school student education programs, storm-drain stenciling, tributary signs and homeowner product rebates.

The MS4 issue first surfaced at the July 16 Salisbury Township Environmental Advisory Council meeting.

Joseph Hebelka, secretary, Salisbury Township Planning Commission and the planners' representative to STEAC, distributed fact sheets to STEAC members at the July 16 meeting.

"One of the components we weren't meeting is education," Hebelka told his fellow STEAC members July 16.

"It is better to wash your car on the yard or to take it to a car wash where it's [used water] recycled," Hebelka said.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System website main page, an MS4 is a system of conveyances including catch basins, curbs, gutters, ditches, man-made channels, pipes, tunnels or storm drains discharging into waters of the United States.

"Polluted stormwater runoff is commonly transported through Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems from which it is often discharged untreated into local water bodies. To prevent harmful pollutants from being washed or dumped into an MS4, operators must obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and develop a stormwater management program," the website states.

"It might be something that the EAC could assist with to meet the regulation," Hebelka said.

Glenn Miller, STEAC vice chair, said, "Why don't we provide them [MS4 information] as links on the township website?"

"What do you think about using this [MS4 education] as a school program?' Joanne Ackerman, township commissioner representative to STEAC asked.

"When we get the rains, that's when the [stormwater] system gets overloaded, Hebelka said.

"Sixty, 70 years ago, we built in areas that you couldn't build in today," Hebelka said.

The NPDES permit program authorized by the Clean Water Act controls water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States. Point sources are conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches.

Homes connected to a municipal system, use a septic system, or do not have a surface discharge do not need an NPDES permit. Industrial, municipal and other facilities must obtain permits if their discharges go directly to surface waters.

The objective of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act passed by the United States Congress in 1972, is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation's waters by preventing point and nonpoint pollution sources, providing assistance to publicly owned treatment works for the improvement of wastewater treatment and maintaining the integrity of wetlands.

Ten municipalities in Lehigh County and 20 in Northampton County are among 85 in north central and northeast Pennsylvania that received the EPA notification.

In addition to Salisbury, municipalities in the Lehigh and Northampton counties circulation areas of Lehigh Valley Press receiving EPA compliance letters for MS4 include: Catasauqua, Whitehall Township, Macungie Township, Upper Milford Township, South Whitehall Township, Emmaus, Alburtis, Weisenberg Township, Fountain Hill, Lower Saucon Township, Hanover Township, Northampton County, Hanover Township, Allen Township, Northampton, Walnutport, Freemansburg and East Allen Township.