Illinois EPA and Soil and Water Conservation District unveil conservation practices at District Headquarters

Springfield—Illinois EPA Director Scott today joined Association of Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts' (AISWCD) Executive Director Rich Nichols, and other dignitaries to showcase best management practices that the Association has implemented in their own parking lot.

 

The Illinois EPA has been working with the AISWCD to improve the Association's "watershed footprint" to design its parking lot and driveway by incorporating a variety of Best Management Practices, including a porous pavement driveway, permeable paver parking lot, rain garden, and native vegetation in landscaping.  The non-point source pollution prevention projects were funded from an award through the Clean Water Act Section 319 program administered by the Illinois EPA.

 

Along with urban area sprawl, we continue to add more and more impervious areas, such as parking lots, driveways, roads, sidewalks and turf grass.  With this, we reduce the areas where rainwater can soak or percolate into the soil to become groundwater. All water eventually drains to the lowest part of a watershed and then into and out of the next downstream watershed, carrying the pollutants with it.

 

Located in the Sangamon River Watershed, water that falls at the AISWCD would previously have hit the pavement, run down the road into a ditch and eventually flow into the Sangamon River.  Some of it might have been collected by a combined storm sewer and treated with other wastewater by the Springfield Sanitary District (adding to its load and treatment costs) then be discharged into the Sangamon River.  From there it would flow to the Illinois River Watershed and then on the Mississippi River Basin and to the Gulf of Mexico, picking up pollutants along the way and carrying them along.  It would also erode the streambanks.

 

With projects like the AISWCD parking lot of pervious material, rainwater is allowed to percolate into the soil, recharging our groundwater rather than adding pollutants and erosion-causing water to our rivers and causing damaging floods.

 

The Association also planted a rain garden, including Marsh Marigold, Fox Sedge, Swamp Milkweed, Black-eyed Susans, Blue Flag Iris and Monkey Flower.  Rain gardens hold stormwater and allow it to slowly percolate into the groundwater system, lessening the stormwater load into our storm sewer systems and ultimately the creeks and rivers.

 

Since 1990, more than 300 non-point source projects have been administered by the Illinois EPA. Projects include developing watershed-based plans; controlling NPS pollution from agricultural lands, urban sources and construction areas; restoration of water quality, wetlands and stream channels and information/education programs.

Illinois EPA has partnered with the Association and its member county districts on a total of 12 Section 319 non-point source projects, totaling almost $3 million in federal grant funds, for which the Association has provided $2 million in match from state and local funding sources.

 

Among the projects were:

###