Stormwater Expert Panel: What stormwater challenge do you think communities will be talking about five or ten years from now that we aren't talking enough about today?

The City of Madison Engineering Division is proud to take part in the statewide Wisconsin Stormwater Awareness Week 2026! Wisconsin Stormwater Week is a collaborative effort of organizations throughout the state that work to raise awareness about the sources of stormwater pollution. WI Governor Tony Evers signed a proclamation establishing September 19 – 27, as the 2026 WI Stormwater Week.  Each day this week, we're hosting a blog panel: focusing on one question, and answers from staff experts in stormwater in our agency. We asked our staff, and here's what they said: 

QUESTION: What stormwater challenge do you think communities will be talking about five or ten years from now that we aren't talking enough about today? 

Jim Wolfe, City of Madison Engineering Division City Engineer 

“Longer term maintenance and upkeep of devices installed during prior housing construction booms will start becoming an issue, along with the costs for managing those requirements." 

Greg Fries, City of Madison Engineering Division, Deputy City Engineer – Stormwater and Sanitary Sewer Design   

“Salt use and shallow groundwater contamination – this is a problem that has been being created slowly since the 60's and it is going to become a critical problem likely sometime in the 2030's.Chloride is a conservative ion; it is not bound to soils like many pollutants, so, just like atrazine, it is not a matter of if it will eventually contaminate the shallow groundwater, but when it will." 

Janet Schmidt, City of Madison Engineering Division, Principal Engineer and Section Manager for Stormwater Design Section 

“We are talking about it but perhaps not as much as they will in the future, but the cost of compliance for our annual permits is very high. It takes a lot of resources to develop and manage programs and maintain the infrastructure we have.  This is hard for communities to absorb with all the other responsibilities they have to their residents." 

Phil Gaebler, City of Madison Engineering Division, Stormwater Resource Engineer  

“The high cost of dredging detention basins and how it was a bad idea for home owners associations to be responsible for maintaining large detention basins.  I am thankful that the City of Madison has ownership and maintenance responsibilities for the majority of the detention basins in on our stormwater system." 

Check back tomorrow for a new question, and new answers from our stormwater expert panel. To learn more about what we're up to this week, learn more in our Engineering blog.