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The municipal stormwater permits are generally issued every five years. This page has the most recent previous cycles. Please contact us if you need older information, we have documentation and history going back to 1995.
The 2024 Phase I and Western WA Phase II Municipal Stormwater Permits received three notices of appeal to the Pollution Control Hearing Board (PCHB). The permits remain in effect during the course of the appeals.
PCHB No. 24-050: Bonnie Blessing - Summary Judgement for Ecology. Dismissed and Closed.
PCHB No. 24-048: Central PS Regional Transit Authority - Pending. Partial Summary Judgement for Ecology.
2019-2024 Historical documents
In 2019 Ecology issued the three Phase I and II five-year municipal stormwater permits, effective August 1, 2019. The Phase I permit's mid cycle modification went into effect October 2021. Find the 2019 Municipal Stormwater General Permit documents on each of the municipal stormwater permit pages:
In early 2021, we settled four appeal issues with Puget Soundkeeper Alliance (PSA) regarding the LID List Approach (see Appendix 1 of the permits); that settlement resulted in Ecology providing additional clarification to the 2019 Stormwater Management Manual for Western Washington.
In December 2021, the Pollution Control Hearings Board (PCHB) sent a notice that they intend to grant summary judgement to Ecology on six legal issues raised by the appeal, leaving only two issues for the PCHB appeal hearing.
In January 2022, we reached a settlement agreement with PSA, therefore the PCHB canceled the appeal hearing.
The settlement agreement includes this language regarding Ecology’s commitments:
Ecology and PSA agree in principle that retrofit requirements for Phase II permittees need to be appropriately scaled to the size and capacity of the individual jurisdictions.
Ecology agrees to consider retrofit requirements for Phase II permittees as part of its process for developing the next Phase II Permit and proposes to utilize the work already in progress under the current Phase II Permit, the development of the Stormwater Action Plans, and the stakeholder process to inform a proposed retrofit requirement for the next Draft Phase II Permit.
To develop the draft retrofit proposal, Ecology agrees to consider and assess scalable retrofit requirements based on amount of impervious cover, population size, growth, and other appropriate measures.
As part of the permit development process, Ecology agrees to provide the rationale and legal basis for the permit decisions with the formal draft Western Washington Phase II Municipal Stormwater Permits.
In 2012 Ecology issued three five-year municipal stormwater permits, effective August 1, 2013 for Phase I and Phase II Western Washington, and effective August 1, 2014 for Phase II Eastern Washington.The Phase I and Phase II Western Washington were given a one-year administrative extension so all three permits are on the same reissuance schedule.
This former Structural Stormwater Control (SSC) Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) — focused on recommendations regarding the Phase I SSC program requirements, and also provided recommendations on a retrofit approach for 2024 WWA Phase II Permit. This committee is now done, thank you to all committee members who participated. We will continue to use the information from the committee for future permit cycles.
