Stormwater management plan unveiled for Chester
CHESTER » City, public and private officials launched an initiative that would create the Stormwater Authority of the City of Chester to foster stormwater management and economic development in a model participants hope will be replicated throughout the country.
“This is one of the greatest opportunities in the history of this community,” Dr. Horace Strand, the executive director of the authority and a long-time environmental city advocate, said.
Fueled by a $1 million grant from PENNVEST, the effort brings city officials together with the Chester Water Authority, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Corvias, who successfully launched a similar program in Prince George’s County, Md. three years ago. Over the next three decades, the authority will cull $50 million to maintain more than 350 acres that will focus on stormwater management but will also beautify the city and create avenues for economic development.
Cecil Rodrigues, acting regional administrator of the U.S. Environemtnal Protection Agency Region 3, explained that it’s not solely about preventing stormwater runoff and flooding but also about creating safe, walkable communities that enhance the quality of life for residents.
“This,” he said, day for Chester.”
Dominique Leuckenhoff, acting director for the EPA Region 3’s water protection division, said the initiative in Chester began years ago when Strand asked her, “Can you do anything about stormwater?” She knew Strand as she was the EPA’s first environmental justice manager in the region as he lobbied on behalf of Chester residents such as his 1996 lawsuit against the state Department of Environmental Protection alleging its permitting allowed “is a new waste facilities disproportionately in the predominantly African American city.
She said about seven years ago, the agency had been looking for ways to push out stormwater management in a way that created economic growth and resiliency for communities.
The question became, “How do we find a way to do the work faster, more affordably and greener while creating economic development?” she said.
Getting input from places as far away as Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash., and as local as Villanova and Temple universities, Lueckenhoff said longevity was the key in this as opposed to short-term solutions.
Strand said this effort is a new beginning for the city.
“What this represents today is this community taking control of its own destiny,” he said. “Instead of waiting for somebody to come in and smile upon us, the mayor has said, ‘We must make things happen.’” And, he said this will. “You cannot tell kids who do not have jobs, ‘Don’t stand on the corner and sell drugs and make more money’ if you can’t give them an alternative,” he said. “This endeavor is about an alternative. In order to turn a page in this community, you must give folks opportunity. And, if the free enterprise system doesn’t understand that, then we’ve got to make it happen ourselves.”
John Picerne is founder of Corvias, the entity that worked to provide the funding avenues for Prince George’s County for its stormwater program and that will be working in the city of Chester.
“Through this partnership with the EPA, with the city of Chester and with Corvias, we will create great opportunities,” he said. “We’ll create job creation, we will clean up the environment. We will help fix the stormwater problems, but I look at that as the baseline, the bare minimum that we have to do.”
He said the vision is to transform gray infrastructure into green infrastructure and that will spur economic development and job creation.
“I believe that Chester, Pa., can be the beacon that it once was on the Delaware River,” Picerne said. “I believe that Chester, Pa. can be a guiding light for so many other cities and towns and municipalities.”