South Middleton Township, home to the Village of Boiling Springs, is 14 miles southwest of Harrisburg. Because the township includes Urban Area as defined by the 2010 United States Census, South Middleton was required to apply for an NPDES General Permit for Stormwater Discharge as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s MS4 Program. South Middleton hired RETTEW to prepare their application, which required mapping the township’s storm sewer system. Like most Pennsylvania municipalities prior to the MS4 program, they did not have an existing comprehensive map of their system. The mapping was needed quickly, as the deadline was fast approaching. The Township also wanted to use its own staff as much as possible to keep costs down.

RETTEW used Esri’s ArcGIS Online and Amazon’s Web Services to create a web mapping application that allowed Township staff to draw their storm sewer features in a web browser. Using existing land development plans, they drew the assets over an electronic map. The edits were saved on a cloud server managed by RETTEW, allowing us to share access to the mapping in real time. Using this method, the Township no longer needed to exchange copies of paper maps and disks of data, and they were able to apply for the general permit by the deadline because all mapping was completed on time.