Brash Industries News On Electronic Stormwater Reporting
ELECTRONIC STORMWATER REPORTING
New Features To Be Expected In The Future For Electronic
Filing Of Reports With The California Water Board
During November 2007, in a meeting with the California Water Board, the following was discussed:
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In a recent meeting with the California Water Board discussing the future of SWARM and the beginning of SMARTS, the above points were brought to the fore. SWARM and SMARTS are the electronic reporting modules created by the California Water Board to expedite the filing of reports as requried by the Permits. There are a number of issues with the current SWARM program. These issues were mentioned at the meeting with the reply from the Water Board that they are currently working on the problems. New features are to be expected in the future as both SWARM and SMARTS evolve to meet user needs. Currently, electronic filing is not required, but it may be in the future. With these changes, Brash Industries is able to more effectively and efficiently submit data on behalf of their clients.
SWARM (Storm Water Annual Report Module) currently allows the electronic filing of the Industrial Annual Report. SMARTS (Stormwater Multi-Application Reporting & Tracking System) will allow the electronic filing of NOIs (Notice of Intents) and SWPPPs (Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plans) in the future.
With electronic reporting, each permit holder is responsible for entering their own data for their reports. When others request information from such reports, the information is gathered from the data entered by the permit holder, thus ensuring the accuracy of the data being requested. Electronic reporting may become mandatory in 2009/2010.
Each permit holder can designate data submitters to submit data for them. One of the new features to be implemented is the ability to specify what data each data submitter is allowed to enter. The permit holder needs to certify all the information to finalize the report for added security. This enables Brash Industries to submit data for their clients more efficiently.
Once the report is finalized, it will be immediately available to the public, there will be no need to send in a paper report with the inherent processing times. The time it takes to receive a report after requesting it from the Water Board is greatly decreased.