This Place Is BMPing: Cliveden Park

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.

Cliveden Park collects runoff from two city blocks in Mt. Airy, thanks to a rain garden featuring step pools (pictured above). During storms, rainwater is directed from an adjacent street and flows down a series of step pools into a rain garden. This system not only reduces the stormwater volume through evapotranspiration and infiltration, it also slows the velocity of the runoff that contributes to combined sewer overflows. Directing and detaining stormwater flow over natural surfaces can serve as a filter and help treat polluted runoff, improving its water quality.

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

Video presentation on the Cliveden Park project from 2008 after the jump.