Every time it rains in Geddes, water runs off roofs, parking lots, driveways and roads, drops into a grate, and travels through pipe until it comes out somewhere.

The town knows exactly how many somewheres there are. There are 101 of them.

That figure comes from the Town of Geddes annual stormwater report, submitted to New York State on April 1, 2026 under permit number NYR20A041 and marked in the state system as deemed complete. It was filed by Gregory Sgromo.

The report is a compliance document rather than a narrative, which is why almost nobody reads it. It is also one of the more revealing files a suburban town produces, because it forces the town to count things.

### What the inventory holds

The core numbers describe a drainage system most residents never think about.

There are 101 MS4 outfalls on the inventory. An outfall is the point where the municipal storm sewer discharges into a stream, ditch or other water. MS4 stands for municipal separate storm sewer system, meaning a system that carries stormwater separately from sanitary sewage.

There are 50 interconnections, points where the town’s system connects to another entity’s drainage system, and 9 municipal facility intraconnections.

There are 52 post-construction stormwater management practices on the inventory. Those are the basins, swales, rain gardens and underground structures built as conditions of development approvals, each one designed to slow water down or filter it before it leaves a site.

There are 7 municipal facilities on the inventory, meaning town-owned properties whose own operations have to be managed for runoff.

And in the reporting year, 40 monitoring locations were inspected under the five-year inspection cycle.

### The water it drains to

The report answers one question that puts the rest in context.

Asked whether the operator discharges to an impaired water listed in Appendix C of the state’s general permit, Geddes answered yes. Asked which pollutants those waters are impaired for, the report lists two: phosphorus and pathogens.

Elsewhere the document places Geddes squarely in the Onondaga Lake watershed, and notes in two places that MS4 operators located in the Onondaga Lake watershed are excluded from certain requirements that apply elsewhere in the state.

That framing matters. Onondaga Lake is one of the most studied and most expensively remediated water bodies in the country. Decades of industrial discharge, a sewage treatment plant on its shore and urban runoff from the surrounding towns combined to produce a lake that has been under active cleanup for a generation.

Phosphorus is the nutrient that drives algal blooms. Pathogens are the reason a beach closes. Both arrive substantially through stormwater in a developed watershed, which is why 101 outfalls in a town of 17,088 people is a number worth publishing.

### Zero enforcement actions

One answer in the report stands out precisely because of how small it is.

Asked how many enforcement actions were undertaken for illicit discharges during the reporting year, including verbal warnings, citations and stop work orders, the town reported zero.

An illicit discharge is anything entering the storm sewer that is not stormwater. In practice that means things like a washing machine plumbed into a storm drain, a business rinsing equipment into a catch basin, or a failing sanitary connection cross-connected into the storm system.

Zero enforcement actions can mean two very different things, and the report does not distinguish between them.

It can mean the town looked and found nothing, which in a mature, largely built-out suburb is entirely plausible. It can also mean the detection program has not yet reached the stage where it produces findings.

The report supports reading it partly the second way. Several sections record that the town’s illicit discharge track down and elimination programs are on a compliance schedule tied to the permit’s effective date of coverage, with multiple items answered no and explained with the phrase this is not due this year.

That is not a violation. A general permit deliberately phases requirements in over five years so a small town is not asked to do everything at once. It does mean the absence of enforcement actions in this particular year is not by itself evidence of a clean system.

### What an MS4 permit actually requires

The rules behind this report are worth knowing, because they explain why a town of 17,000 people files a sixteen page compliance document about rain.

Federal Clean Water Act regulations require operators of municipal separate storm sewer systems in urbanized areas to hold a permit. In New York that permit is administered by the state Department of Environmental Conservation as a general permit, currently GP-0-24-001, and it is built around six minimum control measures: public education, public involvement, illicit discharge detection and elimination, construction site runoff control, post-construction runoff control, and pollution prevention in municipal operations.

Each measure carries deadlines counted from the permit’s effective date of coverage. That structure is why the Geddes report contains so many entries answered no with the explanation that the item is not due this year. It is a five year ramp, not a pass or fail test taken all at once.

The annual report is how the state checks progress, and it is a public document precisely so residents can check the same thing.

### The mapping project underway

The most consequential work described in the report is not finished.

The town states that its comprehensive outfall mapping has been developed in ArcGIS and includes all infrastructure. Separately, the report notes that sewersheds with impaired waters, areas with construction activities, areas with on-site wastewater treatment systems, and stormwater hotspots will be identified during the completion of the MS4 system mapping project, undertaken in 2025 and 2026.

That is the difference between knowing where your pipes are and knowing which of them matter most. A map of 101 outfalls tells you the shape of the system. A map that layers impaired sewersheds and hotspots on top of it tells you which twelve outfalls to inspect first.

Geddes also reports completing several requirements as part of a coalition rather than alone, specifically mapping, two of the minimum control measures, and the phosphorus requirements. Small towns routinely band together on stormwater compliance because the technical work does not scale down well, and a shared consultant is cheaper than five separate ones.

### Who the town is trying to reach

The education section of the report is unusually specific about targets, and it reads like a plan rather than a formality.

For residents, the stated focus is pathogens and phosphorus, proper and legal fertilizer practices, and green infrastructure practices simple enough to install at home.

For commercial properties within impaired sewersheds and the phosphorus TMDL, the report names the business types being targeted: nurseries, landscaping companies and golf courses, on the reasoning that these offer the greater potential for intercepting nutrients in runoff through on-site best practices.

For construction, the report points to the four-hour erosion and sediment control courses taught by the Onondaga County Soil and Water Conservation District.

The town also lists participation in outside events, including an Onondaga County Planning Symposium and an Onondaga Lake event.

Targeting golf courses and landscapers for phosphorus outreach is a sharper choice than a generic mailer, because fertilizer applied at scale on turf is one of the more controllable phosphorus sources in a suburban watershed.

### Construction is quiet right now

Two more figures round out the picture, and they say something about the pace of building in Geddes.

The report lists 1 construction site on the inventory and 0 high priority construction sites. It also reports 0 high priority construction sites discharging to phosphorus impaired waters and 0 discharging to the TMDL.

One active regulated construction site is a very low number. For a town that contains the New York State Fairgrounds and a stretch of commercial development, it suggests that the current building cycle in Geddes is running through smaller projects that fall below the disturbance threshold requiring stormwater permits, rather than through large new developments.

That will not always be true. The value of doing the mapping work now, while the construction inventory is nearly empty, is that the town will have the baseline when it is not.

### How to read it yourself

The report is a public record filed with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation under submission ID HQM-8VE6-NYHYS. The Town of Geddes also links its annual stormwater reports from its own website, alongside the adopted budget and other board documents.

Town Hall is at 1000 Woods Road and the phone number is 315 468 3600.

For a resident, the practical takeaway is narrower than the document. Everything that goes into a storm drain in Geddes reaches a lake that is already carrying too much phosphorus. There is no treatment step in between. That is what a separate storm sewer system means.