On July 25, Westmoreland County Commissioners approved an Integrated Water Resources Plan for the County that will serve as a blueprint for managing the county’s streams, rivers, drinking water, stormwater, and other water resources.
One major goal of the plan is to reduce flooding and better manage stormwater in the county.
Officials said there have been as many as 200 incidents of flooding in Westmoreland County since 2012. About 5 percent of county residents live in a flood plain and more than 9,000 people reside in areas that could experience a catastrophic flood event every century.
Westmoreland County has more than 2,300 miles of waterways, including wetlands, groundwater and floodplains.
Westmoreland County Commissioners signed a resolution to begin the IWRP planning process in December 2015 to start a process that looked deeply into the ways water is used throughout Westmoreland County, the impacts of those uses and some of the things that can be done to ensure that this important resource is responsibly managed.
The following year saw the creation of the Watershed Plan Advisory Committee led by the District to guide the development of the plan.
An engineering consultant, Ethos Collaborative LLC, was hired to model 10 priority watershed areas of interest within the county identified in Phase 1 of the County’s Act 167 Plan completed by L. Robert Kimball and Associates in 2010.
As the IWRP progressed, the District, its partners, and the WPAC, completed the inventory, analysis, and creation of the plan, the watershed modeling, development of the model stormwater ordinance, and the online decision making tool for anyone seeking to develop land within the county related to our water resources.
The Westmoreland County IWRP will be updated as needed to meet future needs to sustain our water resources.
For more information, visit Westmoreland County’s Integrated Water Resources Plan website.
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