From the Greater Lansing Regional Committee for Stormwater Management – Calculate your Residential Stormwater Runoff.
Roads, commercial buildings, and large public parking lots certainly generate a great deal of run-off, but so do our own residences. At home, rooftops, driveways, patios and other hard surfaces prevent precipitation from absorbing into the ground. This means that less rainfall is absorbed into the soil to become groundwater, and more rainfall becomes runoff.