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Excerpt from Pennsylvania Stormwater Best Management Practices Manual:
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Clean reliable water resources are critical for sustaining the environmental health of our natural resources, protecting the public’s health and safety and maintaining the economic vitality of the Commonwealth. The purpose of the updated stormwater management guidelines is to ensure effective stormwater management to minimize the adverse impacts of stormwater on ground water and surface water resources to support and sustain the social, economic and environmental quality of the Commonwealth.
PADEP will ensure that activities and plans approved under its authority will employ stormwater management plans utilizing best management practices to control volume, rate and water quality of post construction stormwater runoff so as to protect and maintain the chemical, physical and biological properties of waters of the Commonwealth. These best management practices must protect and maintain water resources, preserve water supplies, maintain stream baseflows, preserve and restore the flood carrying capacity of waters, preserve to the maximum extent practicable the natural stormwater runoff regimes and natural course, current and cross section of waters of the Commonwealth, and protect and conserve ground waters and ground water recharge areas.
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The excerpts provided above outline the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s current goals for addressing stormwater management throughout the state. These expanded goals address the shortcomings of past stormwater management guidelines which did not account for the losses to groundwater that result from treating stormwater as a waste product. (The Stormwater homepage provides a summary of the hydrologic cycle and how losses of natural areas can impact local aquifers.)
One of the main elements of the PADEP’s revised stormwater management program is a public education requirement for municipalities with municipally owned separate storm sewer systems (MS4’s). The state mandated education program is aimed at helping all residents understand the importance of helping our stormwater recharge the groundwater systems that serve our communities.
The Perkiomen MS4 Partnership has been organized to assist the member municipalities in reaching their mandated goals. The Partnership reforms each year and is open to any municipality however, to date only municipalities within the Perkiomen Creek watershed have participated.
The 2009 Perkiomen MS4 Partners include:
| Douglass Township (MontCo) |
Schwenksville Borough |
| East Greenville Borough |
Telford Borough |
| East Rockhill Township |
Upper Milford Township |
| Hilltown Township |
Upper Providence Township |
| Longswamp Township |
Upper Salford Township |
| Lower Frederick Township |
West Rockhill Township |
| Lower Salford Township |
Worcester Township |
| Marlborough Township |
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| New Hanover Township |
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| Perkasie Borough |
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| Perkiomen Township |
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| Salford Township |
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The Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy will be providing information to the Partners for distribution to municipal constituents as well as advertisements and press releases to local newspapers for broader distribution. The PWC will also be available to assist municipal decision-makers as they review local guidelines for protecting water resources.
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