The City Addresses And Assesses Stormwater Needs

Dunwoody is a young city with old infrastructure.  The challenges of maintaining our stormwater system began with inventorying every pipe, structure, and drain in the city.  These efforts revealed that the average age of the 131 miles of pipe and 10,000+ structures within the City is 40-50 years.  The majority of this infrastructure is made up of corrugated metal pipe which has far exceeded its useful life in many cases. Needless to say, the pipes have not aged gracefully.

 Figure 1.  Typical Condition of 40+ year old Corrugated Metal Pipe 

As our young city continues to grow and develop, so too does our Stormwater Department.  2013 was a busy year. We completed a number of larger projects including 26 replacements, 12 cast in place repairs, 8 detention pond renovations, and 11 engineering studies.  This included repairing corroded portions of our system like the pipe pictured above. We responded to over one hundred citizen service requests resulting in 193 completed work orders by our maintenance crews.

In addition, we have continued to comply with Environmental Protection Association and Environmental Protection Division standards and expanded our efforts to be good stewards of water resources. These efforts included inspecting 20 percent of the city’s outfalls for possible contamination, surveying 20 percent of the detention ponds located within the city, inspecting 20 percent of the total stormwater system inventory, water quality protection educational programs for employees and citizens, a stream cleanup program, and many others.

Figure 2. Remote Camera Used to Survey Damaged Stormwater Infrastructure

We continue to look for ways to improve our stormwater system and identify areas that need repair. Remote cameras, like the one pictured above, were used to remotely inspect portions of our systemthat are not accessible or visible with the human eye. 

2013 was a successful year where we were able to address many problems.  However, with prolonged age and use our stormwater system continues to need attention.  If there are areas of our stormwater system that you are concerned with, please contact the Public Works Department at 678-382-6850.