STORMWATER 101
What is Stormwater?
If your home has a roof, lawn, or driveway, chances are you generate stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff is water from rain or melting snow that doesn’t soak into the ground. Instead, it flows over these surfaces, picking up pollutants in its path.
Why is it important?
Stormwater moves untreated along the street into drains, through underground pipes, and out to nearby streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Trash, bacteria, nutrients, heavy metals, oil, can all be picked up by these flows. Stormwater runoff can also cause soil erosion and localized flooding.
These polluted flows have serious impacts on our enjoyment of local waters for swimming, fishing, and boating and on the integrity of fish and wildlife habitats.
This website, Think Blue Connecticut River, provides some basic information on how you can take part in improving the quality of our local waters.
