Pollution reduction plan submitted

Pennsylvania municipalities required to propose methods to reduce amount of sediment discharge into waterways

Streambank restoration, pond retrofits, riparian buffers and bioswales are some of the ways Franconia Township is proposing to reduce the amount of pollution being carried by water run-off into streams.

Those are some of the options listed in an executive summary of the township’s water pollution reduction plan forwarded to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection following the Franconia Township Board of Supervisors Sept. 13 vote authorizing submission of the plan.

Towns throughout the state, including Franconia, were required to submit the plans by Sept. 16, providing plans for various options that could be used by the municipality to reduce the amount of sediment being discharged into waterways by 10 percent over a five-year period.

The requirements are for the new round of Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permits.

“The most common vehicle for the pollutants to get to the stream is that they attach to sediment on the ground and then, through erosion and rainwater runoff, that gets washed into creeks,” Steve Baluh, West Rockhill’s township engineer, said at West Rockhill’s July 19 meeting, “so the theory is that if you can control the sediment, the amount

of sediment that gets into the creeks, by default, you control the pollutants that attach to those sediments.”

The Franconia plans are for work in the Skippack Creek (including the West

Branch Skippack Creek) and Indian Creek watersheds, according to the executive summary, which was posted on the township’s website. The plan also includes the West Branch Neshaminy Creek and East Branch of the Perkiomen Creek watersheds, but the township is not required to make changes under the plan in the portions of the municipality

within those watersheds, the plan says.

The township does not have to make changes in the portion of the municipality that is in the West Branch Neshaminy Creek watershed because all of that land is either privately owned or maintained by others, the plan says. Township rules are consistent with existing requirements for the East

Branch of the Perkiomen Creek, so no additional measures are needed, the plan’s executive summary says.

Riparian buffers are areas along a stream in which plants help filter out pollutants. Bioswales are trenches with plants into which rainwater runoff is directed, and in which the plants slow the water and filter out pollutants.