This Place Is BMPing: PA DEP Southeast Regional Office

Each week, we profile a BMP—short for Best Management Practices—to demonstrate how local businesses, organizations and neighbors are helping to keep our streams and rivers clean by managing stormwater on their property.

It’s not unexpected that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection would have a BMP or two at its regional headquarters—it’s kind of like seeing a garage next to Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s house, or pink flamingos on John Waters’ lawn. That’s just what they do. But the stormwater management at PA DEP’s office in Norristown (upstream from Philadelphia along the Schuylkill River) is a little bit unusual.

Sure, part of the building features a fairly typical green roof (688 square feet, and accessible to employees on the second floor), but it also sports a 5,000-gallon cistern that resembles a tiki hut. The indoor cistern stores runoff from the impervious portion of the roof; the water is filtered and used to flush toilets and water indoor plants. When the cistern approaches its storage capacity during heavy rainfall, water is diverted from the tank.

Learn more about this stormwater BMP project, find it on a map and view photos at the Temple-Villanova Sustainable Stormwater Initiative project page.