Case Studies

Irving, Texas: Making Compliance a Breeze with NPDESPro

Introduction

Centrally situated between Dallas and Fort Worth, Irving is home to over 240,000 residents and is known for being one of the most diverse cities in the nation. The city takes pride in its comprehensive stormwater management program, designed to protect the environment, improve storm and surface water quality, and ultimately enhance residents' quality of life.

To maintain and improve its surface water quality standards and better manage the city's stormwater permit, Irving acquired NPDESPro through its partner, SwiftComply. This software simplifies stormwater management by providing a web-based platform to document, track, and report on activities supporting the stormwater quality program, helping the city effectively manage its surface water quality and ensure ongoing community benefits."

Challenges

Before implementing NPDESPro, Irving struggled with several issues:

  • Audit Exposed Weaknesses: An audit conducted four years ago revealed significant weaknesses in Irving's stormwater management program. The process was manual and inefficient, relying on paper lists of inspections. Cody Cash, Municipal Drainage Utility Programs Supervisor, reflected, "It was literally two guys, and one of them just had a list on his paper of his inspections. So, we were able to leverage that audit as much as we could to change the organization."

  • Inefficient Paper-Based System: The industrial inspection program was bogged down by paper inspection reports, making it difficult to track compliance history and generate thorough reports with follow-ups and pictures. Jeffrey Shiflet, Irving’s Stormwater Compliance Coordinator, stated, "The backflow group recommended the program. We sat through a demo and found how much it would benefit the industrial inspection program by getting away from paper inspection reports and having a web-based database to perform our inspections."

  • Strained GIS Resources: The use of ArcGIS for tracking inspections was overloading the GIS team, causing frustration and inefficiencies. "It’s been really great to be able to just check all the sites and track all of our inspections without burning up a bunch of ArcGIS credits, which is what we were doing," noted Cash.

Implementation

  • Transition to Web-Based Database: Irving adopted NPDESPro’s web-based database for performing inspections, moving away from paper reports. This allowed for faster, easier access to compliance history and more thorough reporting.

  • Integrated Communication and Tracking: NPDESPro streamlined the inspection process and communication, ensuring notifications were consistently sent and received. This integration tied together inspections and facilitated better follow-up. "So even if they don’t read those notifications, I know they’re getting them and it’s easy to communicate that way through the application," Cash explained.

Results

  1. Simplified Audits: Irving’s most recent audit was significantly easier to manage than the audit 4 years ago. Cash commented, "I don't know what they were doing before, but we recently got audited again, and it was a really easy process for us to get through the audit and our auditor was very impressed with how easy it was to pull up files, go through the process of an inspection, communication, any violations, etc."

  2. Improved Inspection Efficiency: NPDESPro allowed Irving to check all sites and track inspections without overburdening the ArcGIS system, enhancing the efficiency of both the inspection process and the GIS team's workflow.

  3. Enhanced Compliance Management: By providing easy access to historical site data, NPDESPro enabled Irving to identify localized issues and expedite corrective actions based on past issues. "Being able to look at the history of the site and pinpoint areas of concern allows us to stay up to date on what other inspectors are seeing and helps us decide the level of enforcement needed," added Kale Oakley, Senior Environmental Compliance Inspector.

Conclusion

By transitioning to a web-based database, integrating communication and tracking, and simplifying the audit process, Irving has achieved greater efficiency and effectiveness in their stormwater program. As Shiflet noted, “We have been very pleased with this software. We spread the word to municipalities in our region on how this has improved our industrial program.” With NPDESPro, Irving is better equipped to maintain their high standards of water quality and compliance.