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ROMNEY, W.Va. – Fifteen people representing the city of Romney and the West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH) recently participated in a “Stormwater Retrofit Training” session. The workshop, held at Taggart Hall in Romney on Feb. 23, was funded through West Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay Regulatory and Accountability Grant.
The instructors were Sebastian Donner and Alana Hartman of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). The goal of the training session was to follow up on a 2011 retrofit workshop, also held at Taggart Hall, where the Center for Watershed Protection worked with local staff to discover and analyze opportunities to slow down rainwater runoff, soak it in, and treat it with special soil mixes and vegetation.
Some of the proposed projects that came out of the 2011 workshop have been designed and implemented through various partnerships and funding sources. Those include a rain garden at the West Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind and a bioswale (landscape elements designed to remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water), rain barrels, permeable pavers and rain garden in front of City Hall.
“These projects throughout the city will help to relieve some of the excess amounts of water delivered during rainfall or snowmelt events to Big Run and the other small streams in the lower areas of Romney,” Hartman said. “They also remove pollutants from the runoff water.”
Topics covered at the February workshop included how to find opportunities for retrofit projects, benefits of Low Impact Development practices and common pitfalls to avoid, re-visiting projects analyzed in 2011, and a brief update on the progress within our local area toward West Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals.
For more DEP news and information, go to www.dep.wv.gov. Also, be sure to connect with the agency on all social media platforms. Follow @DEPWV on Twitter and find us on YouTube by searching “Environment Matters.” For specific information about our REAP (Rehabilitation Environmental Action Plan), West Virginia Project WET (Water Education for Teachers), West Virginia Watershed Improvement Branch, Youth Environmental Program and Human Resources initiatives, connect on Facebook.