Watershed City had big dreams. With a major grant secured, city officials planned one of the largest green infrastructure upgrades in their history. These projects would reduce pollution, prevent flooding, and protect the water quality for all residents.

The plan included pervious sidewalks to let rain soak through, green roofs on new city buildings, urban tree plantings, bioswales to filter runoff, downspout filters, and a large bioretention park called RainWater Gardens. It would even serve as a community space and park.

The Stormwater Defenders were invited to help guide the way. Sergeant Stormwater joined the city planning committee. Vax and Spectro presented ideas on long-term maintenance and inspections. Super Sampler and Chito-Man worked together in the lab to do hydrology modeling and conduct treatability tests to determine proper plant mixes and filtration media to ensure the best protection for the city’s waterways. TARP began putting the erosion control plans together for construction portion of these projects.

Watershed City was on the path to a cleaner, bluer future.

But deep in the City, and undercurrent of anger was beginning to rage.

The Baron, a wealthy and corrupt industrialist, caught wind of the city’s plan. He realized these changes would cut into his profits. Fewer polluted discharges meant fewer utility charges from his rigged CSO meters. The Baron also uses CSO bypasses to distract the Defenders from his other maleficent schemes. Less water in the system meant fewer bypass emergencies to distract the Stormwater Defenders.

He summoned his nefarious team of villains: The Degraders.

"We can’t let them finish these projects," he growled. "Sabotage everything. Make them regret going green."

Construction began. Spectro and TARP inspected the sites to ensure erosion controls were working. Sustainamix delivered permeable pavement. EcoBlend Renewables provided the compost, oyster shell, sand, and biochar for biofiltration media.

Everywhere in the city, green infrastructure was coming to life. Plants were installed, sidewalks were poured with permeable pavement, and RainWater Gardens was almost ready. The mayor expressed her pleasure of the sustainability measures the City had taken and gratitude to the Stormwater Defenders at the ribbon cutting ceremony.

"We finished just in time!" she said. "There’s a storm coming tomorrow."

But no one expected what would follow.

The next morning, alarms blared at Stormwater Defender Headquarters.

"Flooding reported at sidewalk project on Riverside!" "Oil sheen detected at RainWater Gardens!" "Bioretention sites not draining!"

Something had gone terribly wrong.

Sergeant Stormwater called a team meeting.

"We have to find out why this happened! Theresa work with SAM in the lab and send me any updates on what you learn. Spectro I want you to go interview EcoBlend Renewables and see if you can determine why there was a sheen. TARP you go investigate RainWater Gardens. Chito-Man in need you to figure out why we had high metal counts coming off the green roofs. Vax take CECIL and SWEEP and go investigate all the project sites and make sure the site is cleaned up and report back anything you see. I’m going to work with the mayor and citizens to plan a restoration action. Let’s do this as a team and figure out how to restore Watershed City water quality to be fishable and swimmable for our citizens. Let’s find out what went wrong!"

Super Sampler and SAM raced to process samples. Vax and SWEEP began cleanup. TARP installed emergency erosion controls. Chito-Man shrunk down to investigate the clogged systems from within.

“We just found two EcoBlend Renewables employees tied to a tree on the west side of town. They said they were making a delivery of material to the new RainWater Gardens park but were hijacked by a super tall mudman, a man floating on a green slime cloud and what looked to be a mobster. Just thought you would want to know.”

“Thank you detective” replied Sarge. “Come in Spectro”

“I’m here at EcoBlend Renewables and walking around the property with the manager and nothing looks wrong. Materials look good and nothing suspicious” Spectro replied.

“That’s because whatever went down didn’t happen there, it happened on the west side of town. Contact Detective Roberts and get over to AKART Way he will show you what they found.” said Sarge.

“Sarge, SAM is reporting a high concentration of calcium aluminate in the subgrade gravel of the pervious sidewalks. Calcium aluminate can act as binder in cement, but we also know that it is often the calling card of Cement Slugs in the area. Can you send CECIL to do a flyover of the new sidewalks along Riverside Ave to see if he reports any Slug trails?” asked Super Sampler.

“I’m walking on the underlayment of the green roof of the new Center for Urban Stormwater off of Sheetflow St. There appear to be a bunch of small penetrations. I also thought I saw one of Ion-X’ Nanoizers. I’m going to keep looking around” reported Chito-Man in his shrunken ionic state.

“Be careful” replied Sarge. “TARP do you see anything?”

“Ive been at RainWater Gardens for the past 20 minutes. The media soils are heavy compacted by someone with a great big foot. It also has a bunch of garbage in it and really smells bad, even through my mask.” TARP replied.

“Footprint about size 13?” asked Sarge

“Sounds about right.” said TARP

“Im getting reports back from Vax. His TDC alarm is going off and he found track out coming off of the permeable asphalt pavement project at BMP’s-R-Us.” said Sarge. “I’m headed there now.”

All evidence pointed to The Degraders as the culprits.

The Degraders highjacked the EcoBlends Renewable trucks and filled them with decant sludge, sweeping debris and food waste mixed it into the compost blend so no one would notice when they installed it.

The slug trails were left by Cement Slugs that had been at work the night before the paving was schedule the next day.

The soil plugging the pervious surfaces and causing sedimentation in the bioswales was clear evidence of The Eroder.

The whip slashes in the green roof underlayment were signs of Ion-X exposing a zinc coated separation shield to the Center below.

Chito-Man found a Tox-Pod (one of Tox-Ick’s reservoirs for his highly toxic green goo) located behind the building and Nanoizers were like a stream of ants delivering that material into the green roof media and the surrounding MS4.

Footprints at RainWater Gardens showed that the Baron and a bunch of his goons were stomping the media to compact it so it wouldn’t drain.

Sarge met Vax at a location of a broken down TDC. Vax had already pulled the guidance chip and was analyzing the programming when Sarge arrived.

“TDCs and Scattershot were programmed to dump trash and debris along all the pervious surface projects the night of the ribbon cutting”, Vax robotically communicated.

“Can you tell where the signal came from?” Sarge asked Vax.

“A building in the IDDE District.” reported Vax

“The Baron owns that area” said Sarge. “Everyone return to Headquarters. It is time to put an end to this.”

The Stormwater Defenders launched a raid on The Degraders' hideout.

They battled back and forth. The Defenders worked as a team and combined their powers to overcome the pollutants and attacks from the Degraders.

After a fast-paced battle, the villains were captured and brought to HQ. Ion-X was placed in a special non-ionic cell so she couldn’t shrink and escape.

Watershed City was safe—for now.

With the villains locked up, the Defenders began repairs:

Chito-Crabs were released into the green roof media to repair the whip slashes and remove all the Nanoizers and nano pollutants from the Tox-Pod liquid.

SWEEP used his regenerative vacuum and high pressure recycled water system on all the pervious hard surfaces to get them infiltrating again.

Spectro and TARP worked with citizens and local botanical society to remove the plants, replace the media with the correct clean media from EcoBlend Renewables and replant the plants.

Super Sampler tested everything to ensure it was safe again.

Soon, the city was back on track. Rain soaked into the sidewalks. Plants flourished. The water was clean.

The mayor held a public celebration and RainWater Garden. She expressed how proud she was that the citizens of Watershed City cared and came together to work as a team.

"Thanks to the Stormwater Defenders, our water is clean, and our city is strong."

But when the Defenders returned to HQ, something was wrong.

The cells were empty.

Ion-X's special chamber had a hole bored into it. A tracking chip left in the cell of The Baron pointed to an IC-Bot.

"She escaped," Ben said. "And let them all out."

Spectro added, "It followed a beacon in The Baron’s shoe. They planned this."

The Degraders had vanished once again.

Sergeant Stormwater stood before his team.

"We stopped them this time. But they’ll be back. We must protect Watershed City’s water for everyone. Fishable. Swimmable. Safe."

The Stormwater Defenders raised their fists.

"We pledge to defend our waters. One drop at a time."

And so the mission continues...