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Welcome to the Low Impact Development Stormwater Management Practice Planning and Design Guide

This is a new kind of guideline document; intended to improve your experience:

• Recommendations have been pared down into tight, actionable articles. Expect to find a lot of data rich tables, lists and tools, rather than paragraphs of background material.
• The wiki format invites you to comment at the bottom of every page. If you believe the content to be incorrect or out of date, please let us know using ‘Help improve this page’ and we’ll make a rapid response. Minor changes will be made as soon as possible, significant changes may be delayed pending review by a panel of STEP members. Note that the comments you leave will appear in the ‘VIEW FEEDBACK’ link on the left.
• When you need to reference an article to support your decisions and designs, don’t forget to include the date and time at which you took the advice. Don’t worry if the content has changed since you used it, the website maintains a detailed history of the time and every content change made, see ‘VIEW HISTORY’ at the top.

This is a relatively young, living document; conceived earlier in 2017. You will find that we’re missing information, but we are growing quickly. An important part of this process is to know what you need, so please submit your feedback!
Finally, if you are a subject matter expert and wish to contribute a new article, we would love to hear from you. lid.pd.guide@gmail.com

Whilst we are still beautifying our landing page, please use the Table of contents

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Low impact development is a stormwater management and land development strategy applied at the parcel and subdivision scale that emphasizes conservation and use of on-site natural features integrated with engineered, small scale hydrologic controls to more closely mimic pre-development hydrologic functions.

A stormwater management strategy that seeks to mitigate the impacts of increased urban runoff and stormwater pollution by managing it as close to its source as possible. It comprises a set of site design approaches and small scale stormwater management practices that promote the use of natural systems for infiltration and evapotranspiration, and rainwater harvesting.

Sustainable Technologies Evaluation Program

A shallow excavated surface depression containing prepared filter media, mulch, and planted with selected vegetation.

The engineered soil component of bioretention cell or dry swale designs, typically with a high rate of infiltration and designed to retain contaminants through filtration and adsorption to particles.