The City of Seattle (City) negotiated a Consent Decree that affords the option to propose an Integrated Plan to better manage wet weather discharges and prioritize the City's investments in water quality. The City ranked its receiving water bodies based on the Consent Decree requirements and then identified potential green, gray, and programmatic stormwater projects to be implemented and CSO detention projects to be deferred. The City developed pollutant loads models and conducted exposure assessments to compare the water quality, human health, and habitat benefits of the candidate stormwater and CSO projects. The City used multi-objective decision analysis to help select a combination of stormwater projects and CSO deferrals that meets the Consent Decree requirements and supports the City's triple bottom line decision making. Seattle's Integrated Plan should achieve greater water quality benefits than would have been provided by the deferred CSO projects alone.
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