Engineering Division - Community Development Department
City Hall - 44 N Lorimier Street, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701
573-339-6327 Option #5 | [email protected]
The updated Stormwater Management Permit Application is now online.
Please review the changes before your next submittal.

Questions about a project? Contact the Community Development Department for a pre-design meeting.

Cape Girardeau's Water Quality Impact

Take the Clean Creeks Questionnaire to get involved with our program, influence the program's direction, as well as measure and map the impact you have on our community creeks. Be sure to come back to the map to see your impact shown! When you're done, learn more about the program below.


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Keeping Our Creeks Clean
Water that comes from rain or snow melt that doesn't soak into the ground becomes stormwater. Stormwater has the potential to pick-up pollutants from streets, sidewalks, and parking lots and deposit them in surface waters. Unlike wastewater, stormwater is not treated by the City in a large treatment facility. Instead, hundreds of smaller treatment structures and methods are used throughout the City. Some of these treatment structures are under parking lots of new businesses, hidden in the landscaping of those businesses, or in the open spaces of a subdivision. Whether treated or untreated, Cape Girardeau's stormwater, and the pollutants it carries, ends up in our many creeks. Sediments, trash, and chemicals can harm the aquatic life in our creeks and the Mississippi River, which is the drinking water source for many communities downstream.
Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4)
Cape Girardeau is one of many communities, nationwide, that are required to protect water quality through the use of a Stormwater Management Plan as directed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That plan is divided into 6 sections or Minimum Control Measures (MCMs).
  • Public education and outreach - We reach you at home or work with information on how to keep Cape creeks clean.
  • Public involvement and participation - Where you give us input on what is important to you regarding stormwater and ask you to join the effort in protecting water quality.
  • Illicit discharge detection - When we, as a community, identify and eliminate pollutants that are entering our stormwater system or our creeks.
  • Construction site stormwater runoff control - Keeping mud, dirt, and construction waste out of our streets and streams.
  • Post-construction stormwater management in new development and re-development - Ensuring new construction is effectively treating stormwater for pollutants now and in the future.
  • Pollution prevention, good housekeeping for community operations - Establishing good policy and procedures to ensure we are doing what we are able, to prevent stormwater pollution.