As engineers and wanna-be engineers, we in the stormwater industry love our acronyms. We love them even better if they are difficult to understand for the non-engineer. It makes us feel like we are part of an elite class.
One acronym that you may hear more and more as you pay more attention to the stormwater world is BMP. BMP is short for Best Management Practice.
Best Management Practice means the best practices that have been determined by the stormwater industry for managing stormwater. It can refer to any means of verifying that stormwater laden with pollutants doesn’t discharge from your site. In the design business, BMPs can range from the extremely complex to the very simple. BMPs can include things such as extremely complex and expensive water quality systems that utilize filters, varying water elevations, and settling ponds. It can also include things as simple and mundane as an asphalt berm to direct stormwater to a desired inlet point.
BMP is also used when discussing the operations of a site as it pertains to ensuring clean stormwater runoff. Sweeping your pavement on a regular basis is considered an operational BMP because doing so removes potential pollutants from the asphalt and elliminates the possibility that those pollutants can be washed into the stormwater runoff and into the receiving waters. Covering dumpsters is considered a BMP because the cover keeps the rainwater out. If allowed into the dumpster, rainwater would pick up pollutants from the trash inside and then leak through the cracks in the dumpster, becoming polluted runoff.
BMP is an all-encompassing term, including any measure that can help to control stormwater pollution. To learn more about Stormwater BMPs, try the National Menu of Stormwater Best Management Practices.