About the Ohio Stormwater Association

The Ohio Stormwater Association is a group of public and private citizens dedicated to advancing the management of stormwater and related natural resources through education, leadership, watershed-based coordination and technical assistance in Ohio. The Ohio Stormwater Association is a not-for-profit, non-political organization. The Ohio Stormwater Association is organized formally as the stormwater division of the Water Management Association of Ohio which maintains a 501(c)4 status.

What we do:

The Ohio Stormwater Association provides educational and networking opportunities for people focused on reducing the negative impacts of stormwater runoff.

The Ohio Stormwater Association provides quarterly educational meetings on topics of interest to our members and helps to sponsor the Ohio Stormwater Conference being held each spring.

History of the Ohio Stormwater Association Prior to March of 2009, the Ohio Stormwater Association was previously named the Ohio Stormwater Taskforce. The Ohio Stormwater Task Force (OSWTF) began as a grassroots organization in the 1990s. Since the beginning, a wide variety of stakeholders were involved in discussing the issues of stormwater and watershed management including soil and water conservation staff, county engineers, city and county offi cials, regional planning organizations, state government agencies, watershed groups, consulting engineers and others.

In 1998, the group planned its first very big educational event, a stormwater conference in Blue Ash, Ohio that drew participants from all over Ohio. At that event, more innovative and preventative stormwater approaches were presented, such as the Center for Watershed Protection's Better Site Design. In 2000, the Ohio Stormwater Task Force joined the Water and Management Association of Ohio as its' stormwater division. This enabled the organization to apply for a federal grant to help finance regional workshops for local communities as they began preparing phase II stormwater management plans. These same workshops were used to survey communities and identify obstacles to more cooperative watershed wide approaches to stormwater management. In 2005, the task force issued a report regarding Ohio legislation and the potential for Ohio communities to manage stormwater from a multi-jurisdictional or watershed basis. The stormwater task force concluded that necessary changes from Ohio's legislature would be diffi cult in the current climate to support watershed-based management. Since that time the group has focused on being a facilitator of stormwater and watershed-oriented educational opportunities.