12 Things Your Community Can Do to Protect Water Resources
A stormwater pond overflows, washing debris
and refuse into street drains that eventually lead
to nearby streams and rivers.
Many tools are available for communities and community-based watershed groups to protect surface and groundwater resources. Individual communities and community-based watershed groups can focus on some, or all, of the 12 tools listed below in their pursuit of healthy rivers, streams, lakes, and estuary waters or they can cooperate in a shared vision of water resource protection with neighboring communities.
- Reduce the amount of impervious surface in new development
- Practice land conservation or conduct acquisition to protect sensitive areas
- Create new stream and wetland buffers and protect existing buffers
- Enact or enforce a strict erosion and sediment control program
- Require stormwater best management practices (BMPs) and Better Site Design techniques for new development
- Restore degraded stormwater systems, retrofit where necessary
- Use best available technology for sewage treatment plants and septic systems
- Initiate a community-based education and outreach program to landowners
- Monitor and assess your water to provide baseline data and identify changes in water quality
- Create a local enforcement program for stormwater violations and illicit connections
- Develop an operation and maintenance program to reduce pollutant loading from your municipality's buildings, roads and parks that includes training for municipal employees
- Work with neighboring communities at a watershed level to implement and accomplish goals.
Watershed signs mark the tributaries of the
Hudson River Estuary
The State, as well as many local organizations and academic partners, is dedicated to assisting in our shared vision for protecting Hudson Valley water resources. For more information on any of the tools above, please contact the Hudson River Estuary Program.
