Maintaining Green Stormwater Infrastructure in Urban and Rural Vermont: Municipal Maintenance Capacity, Aesthetics, and Connections to Stormwater Policy

Tasked with the implementation of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) to address water quantity and quality issues, municipalities face challenges regarding the function of stormwater projects and perceptions surrounding aesthetic and maintenance concerns. Urban and rural municipalities provide very different contexts for GSI adoption and maintenance. Urban areas are well positioned to expand on the activities of existing departments with additional funding and personnel, while rural municipalities will likely need to share resources with surrounding towns and contract out much of the maintenance work. This study investigated GSI maintenance capacity and aesthetic concerns within municipalities in Vermont by (1) examining officials’ perspectives regarding the ability for their municipality to maintain a common bioretention practice under different vegetated design scenarios, (2) assessing visual appeal of those scenarios, and (3) evaluating current maintenance activities conducted and sources of labor. Through a survey of Vermont municipalities, we utilized landscape visualizations of a typical downtown Vermont street right-of-way to communicate possible design scenarios of gray storm sewer infrastructure and three green vegetated bioretention designs to elicit municipal officials’ perceptions. Favorable visual appeal of all bioretention vegetation schemes, especially the grass-and-tree-vegetated design, indicates a lack of aesthetic barriers to adoption. Perceived ability to maintain the bioretention systems varied among municipalities and design. We analyzed the impacts of town attributes, including the existence of several stormwater policies, on perceptions of GSI. Positive perceptions of municipal capacity to perform bioretention maintenance correspond to stormwater policies in place, tax base, and other town attributes. In rural settings like our study area, road networks, development patterns, and a combination of ditch systems and pipe-based drainage networks contribute to erosion, flooding, nutrient pollution, habitat fragmentation, and deterioration of surface water quality. This research underscores the importance of understanding municipal decision-making about GSI implementation in rural towns and small cities.