The Post-Storm Stormwater Inspection Checklist

A post-storm inspection has a clock on it, which changes how it should be run. This is a field-order checklist rather than a form — your permit’s form governs what gets recorded.

Before you leave

1. Confirm the event qualified. Total accumulation over the measurement window against the trigger in this site’s permit — not the one you inspected yesterday in another state.
2. Note the deadline, in site local time. Write it down. Most missed inspections are missed by hours, not days.
3. Pull the last inspection. Any corrective action still open is the first thing to walk.
4. Check the forecast. More rain arriving changes what is worth stabilising first.
5. Take the right form. State-specific, with your certification details to hand.

On arrival

1. Read the on-site gauge, if there is one, and record the time you read it. If your permit names it as the record, this figure is the one that matters.
2. Photograph the site entrance — conditions, date context, and the general state of the perimeter.
3. Walk the discharge points first. If sediment left the site, that is the finding that matters most and it is most visible now.

The walk

Order it by consequence rather than by geography — if the clock runs out or the weather closes in, you want the important things already recorded.

• Discharge points and receiving waters. Evidence of sediment leaving the site, turbidity, deposition downstream.
• Perimeter controls. Silt fence: undermined, overtopped, collapsed, or loaded to capacity. Check the ends, which is where failures start.
• Inlet protection. Blocked, bypassed, or full.
• Sediment basins and traps. Storage remaining, outlet condition, evidence of overtopping.
• Slopes and stockpiles. Rilling, gullying, cover displaced by wind or runoff.
• Stabilised construction exits. Tracking onto public roads is a common and highly visible citation.
• Concrete washout and material storage. Containment intact, no discharge, lids on.
• Dewatering. If it ran, where did it go and was it treated.
• Previously open corrective actions. Closed, or still open with a reason.

Recording it

The record is what survives. Everything above is only worth the hour if this part is complete.

• Date and time of the inspection, not of the paperwork.
• Your name and certification number, where the state requires it.
• Rainfall amount and its source — “0.62″ over 24 h, NOAA radar estimate” or “0.60″, site gauge, read 07:15”. Never an unattributed number.
• Each control measure, with its condition — including the ones that were fine.
• Photos attached to this inspection, with capture times preserved.
• Every deficiency with a corrective action, a responsible person and a target date.
• Your signature, filed before you leave if the tooling allows it.

Before you drive away

1. File it. A form finished in the truck beats one finished on Tuesday from memory, and it is the difference between a contemporaneous record and a reconstruction.
2. Hand off anything urgent verbally. A corrective action logged but not communicated is not going to happen today.
3. Confirm the event is closed out in whatever system you keep, so the next storm starts clean and is not absorbed into this one.

The two failure points

In practice, post-storm inspections go wrong in the same two places every time. The first is not knowing the event qualified — the storm passed at the weekend, or landed on the site nobody was thinking about, and the window closed before anyone checked a total. The second is the record written later, when detail has faded and the date on the form no longer matches when it was written.

Both are solvable before the storm rather than after it: automatic detection of the trigger, and a form that can be completed on site with no signal.

Common questions