A regional effort to clean the Wissahickon Creek watershed is close to moving forward, as local municipalities consider whether to support the Wissahickon Clean Water Partnership, writes Dan Sokil for the Lansdale Reporter.

“We have an opportunity to own the solution, to develop the plan, to work to restore the Wissahickon Creek,” said Rea Monaghan, Water Quality Program Manager for the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association.

According to Sokil, over the past several months, the watershed association has been working to coordinate local municipalities and water authorities on a new effort to meet stormwater runoff regulations.

Monaghan and Drew Shaw, a section chief for environmental planning with the Montgomery County Planning Commission, recently outlined the next steps in that process for the North Wales’ borough council

Sixteen municipalities from North Wales to Philadelphia are in various stages of joining on to the effort. Each municipality must receive a permit from the Department of Environmental Protection regarding their municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4), and each must meet a total maximum daily load (TMDL) of sediment they must remove from the watershed.

“This alternative TMDL will be moving away from a single specific number, and be looking at things like, how can we restore hydrology to the greatest extent possible, after development, in townships, so that groundwater is recharged and stormwater is not being discharged into the creek to begin with,” Shaw said.

Click here to read more about the effort to clean the Wissahickon Creek watershed in the Lansdale Reporter.