Click here to view Big Box PDF Documents

Introduction

This effort was funded by an EPA Assistance Agreement funded by the Office of Water. The recommendations or outcomes of this effort may or may not reflect the views or policies of EPA. The purpose of this project is to provide large building and site footprint high volume retailers with strategies that integrate innovative and highly effective Low Impact Development (LID) stormwater management techniques into their site designs for regulatory compliance and natural resource protection at the local levels. LID is an innovative approach to stormwater management that uses decentralized, or source, controls to replicate pre-development hydrology (stormwater) conditions. This approach can be used as an alternative or enhancement for conventional end-of-pipe stormwater pond technology. This alternative tool is important because of the potential to lessen the energy impacts of large concentrated volumes of runoff from conventional end-of-pipe approaches on receiving waters as well as reducing the development footprint and long-term maintenance considerations for end-of-pipe facilities.

The Center has partnered with the Target Corporation for this effort. Target provided input on typical industry planning, design, and operational considerations as well as review for the effort. The focus of the effort is to present these concepts and techniques in an easily understood format so that a dialogue between corporate developers, local engineers, and local governments can be initiated on how to adapt and integrate these strategies and techniques into the local regulatory and watershed protection programs.