Your city must report to the state if your basin is not maintained
Your city must report to the state if your basin is not maintained
2026-09-15 · Ohio · Compliance · Pending — not yet law
The detention basin on your association's common area is on a municipal map filed with the State of Ohio, the city holds a copy of the maintenance agreement your developer signed, and the number of enforcement actions taken for failure to maintain is a line in that city's annual report to Ohio EPA.1
The instrument is Ohio EPA's general permit for small municipal separate storm sewer systems. The current permit, OHQ000004, was issued April 1, 2021 and expired March 31, 2026. The draft replacement, OHQ000005, was public-noticed June 4, 2026, with a hearing July 28 and comments closing August 4, 2026. No final permit had issued as of today, so the programme is running under the expired permit's continuation clause.
What the city must do about your basin
The post-construction control measure, at Part III.B.5 of both the current permit and the draft:
“You shall ensure adequate long-term operation and maintenance of post-construction runoff controls, including provisions for when property changes ownership.”
And in more detail:
“Your program shall also ensure that long-term O&M plans are developed and agreements in place for all applicable sites, including after changes of ownership. Your operation and maintenance program shall ensure that private and public post-construction runoff controls are being maintained per existing long-term O&M plans, agreements and local ordinances or other regulatory mechanisms. You shall maintain a copy of the long-term O&M plans and agreements provided during construction and document long-term O&M inspections. Your program shall include, at a minimum, one on-site inspection by you or a third party of each post-construction runoff control during this permit term.”
The mapping duty at Part III.B.3.b expressly reaches private facilities, requiring a map including “flood control facilities (retention/detention ponds), post-construction water quality BMPs (public and private),” identified by type of practice.
And what it must report
The annual report line items include the “[n]umber of enforcement actions taken for failure to adequately install post-construction runoff controls and the number of enforcement actions taken for failure to maintain”; the number of long-term O&M plans and agreements in place; and the number of inspections performed, split between those done by the municipality and the “number performed privately.”
Associations are also named directly in the public-involvement provision, which encourages the municipality to involve “commercial and industrial businesses, trade associations, environmental groups, homeowners' associations, and educational organizations.”
Basin maintenance is a capital item on a long cycle. Our Ohio reserve studies page covers how to carry one.
The document most boards have never read
In a typical Ohio association the basin, wet pond, bioretention cell or grassed swale is common area the association owns, under a long-term operation-and-maintenance agreement that the developer signed with the city at platting.
Most boards have never read that agreement. Many do not have a copy. It was signed before the association existed, by a party that has long since left, and it binds the association as successor “post-development landowner.”
The permit language contemplates exactly that succession — “including provisions for when property changes ownership” and “including after changes of ownership” — and directs the municipality to ensure the obligation follows the land.
The city has a copy. Get yours. Our Ohio water conservation page covers the drainage obligations that sit alongside it.
Why the renewal changes nothing
A direct comparison of the post-construction provisions in the current permit and the draft shows them identical, word for word. The obligations above survive the renewal unchanged.
Ohio EPA's own list of proposed post-construction changes is procedural: reporting the status of the applicant's O&M programme in the notice of intent, training for plan reviewers, documenting final plan approval by letter or email, an initial inspection within fourteen days of the start of earth disturbance, and two added performance-standard options for total maximum daily load areas.
So the new permit changes nothing for a board. There is nothing in it to wait for.
A neglected basin is not a neighbour complaint
That is the shift in framing this deserves. Boards treat a silted, overgrown or eroding basin as an aesthetic problem that a resident might grumble about.
It is an entry in a city's report to the state. The municipality is obliged to inspect it at least once per permit term, to hold the maintenance agreement, and to count the enforcement actions it took for failure to maintain. A city under pressure on its own permit compliance has a reason to enforce that has nothing to do with whether anyone complained.
It is also, separately, a liability exposure to the owners downhill. An Ohio association that declined to remediate an undersized stormwater system lost a jury verdict on trespass, negligence, nuisance, breach of fiduciary duty and two statutes, affirmed by the Second District in 2025.
What to do, in order
Pull the recorded plat and the maintenance agreement. County recorder, public record, an afternoon's work. Read what the association actually agreed to and who agreed it.
Ask the city for its inspection history on your facility. It has one, under the permit. If there are open findings, you would rather know now.
Find out whether you are in an assessed subdivision. In Summit County the county engineer maintains basins in assessed subdivisions and recovers the cost permanently on every lot's tax bill, at a statutorily presumed 20 percent of original construction cost. An association that does not know it is in one may be reserving for work its members already fund.
Put the basin in the reserve study as a component with a replacement cost. Sediment removal, outlet structure repair, embankment stabilisation and forebay cleaning are capital events on a long cycle — exactly the profile that gets omitted from studies focused on roofs and paving.
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