Reading, PA Environmental Rules: Stormwater Management (2026)

Chapter 505 is Reading's Act 167 ordinance. Pennsylvania's Storm Water Management Act requires each county to adopt watershed-scale stormwater plans and obligates municipalities, within six months of plan approval, to adopt or amend their local ordinances - including zoning, subdivision, building, and erosion-and-sediment control rules - to be consistent with the watershed plan (32 P.S. § 680.11). Reading sits in both the Schuylkill River and Tulpehocken Creek watersheds, so Chapter 505 implements the Berks County / DEP-approved Act 167 plans for those drainages. The ordinance was substantially updated by Ordinance 28-2021 to align with the current DEP model and the city's NPDES MS4 permit obligations under 25 Pa. Code Chapter 92a (which governs Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems and the Six Minimum Control Measures: public education, public involvement, illicit-discharge detection, construction-site runoff, post-construction stormwater, and pollution prevention/good housekeeping). Substantively, Chapter 505 requires that any 'regulated activity' (earth disturbance, new impervious area, redevelopment over thresholds set in § 505-105) submit a Stormwater Management Site Plan to the City, demonstrate compliance with the volume, rate, and water-quality criteria in §§ 505-126 to 505-128, and record a permanent BMP Operation and Maintenance Agreement under Appendix A. Appendix A also catalogs accepted BMPs - infiltration trenches, bioretention, rain gardens, permeable paving, wet ponds, forested buffers - and Appendix B sets the engineering design criteria. Erosion and sediment control during construction is concurrently governed by the state E&S rule at 25 Pa. Code Chapter 102, which kicks in at 5,000 square feet of earth disturbance and is enforced by the Berks County Conservation District for the PA DEP.