We are highlighting this BMP—short for Best Management Practice—to demonstrate how local businesses, organizations and neighbors are helping to keep our streams and rivers clean by managing stormwater on their property.
Here, a Philadelphia Parks and Recreation site was transformed to help clean runoff flowing from Germantown to nearby creeks.
Before we constructed a stormwater wetland at Saylor Grove in Fairmount Park, the area received an excessive amount of runoff that drained into Monoshone Creek, a tributary to the Wissahickon, resulting in erosion of the Monoshone and impaired water quality.
Before:
After:
A one-acre wetland created in 2006 allows the park to now handle approximately 25 million gallons of urban stormwater each year, slowing the flow to the Monoshone and filtering the stormwater naturally by removing pollutants as the water cascades over rocks en route to the wetland.
We are continuing to monitor this stormwater wetland to determine the reduction in stormwater flow to the creek and analyze its performance. It is estimated that the wetland intercepts 73 percent of the watershed's annual runoff.