By MARILYN MCCONAHAY
Record Herald Writer
Courtesy of the Weekly Record Herald, Printed on 9-23-11
WEST MILTON – At the Sept. 13 council meeting, street supervisor and acting city manager Ben Herron reported that West Milton had received an informal commendation on the way the village implements its storm water plan.
During a recent telephone conversation, Herron said Ohio District Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) representative Chris Cotton praised the village for its implementation of its storm water management plan.
“It’s more like a comment than a commendation, but we are proud of it,” Herron said.
Several years ago, the village needed to update its approach to handling storm water.
“In early 2003, we enacted our storm water management plan that meets all the EPA’s guidelines.” Herron said.
He said the village’s former plan was difficult to utilize.
“In that format, everyone had to use rows and columns. It just was not user-friendly,” Herron said. “We asked the Ohio EPA if we could change the format and they let us go to using paragraph form for our annual reports as long as we met all their criteria. We pledged to follow all their practices.”
But what the EPA representative said impressed him was the way West Milton’s practices exceed what is required by regulations.
“We were meeting the plan’s goals, but we’re going above and beyond. We put these things in the report, but we don’t necessarily have to,” Herron said.
For instance, he said, the crews place sandbags in front of the village’s salt supplies.
“If it rains, the water can wash out some of the salt. The sandbags keep it from leaking out,” he said. “We’re also cutting back on salt use, too. We only use what we really need to use, and there’s less that could get into the catch basins.”
Another above-and-beyond practice is the manner in which salt trucks are cleaned out after a use.
“When we wash our trucks out, we put pads around our catch basins to keep any harmful residue from entering the water system. It’s a matter of housekeeping,” Herron said.
Illegal dumping into catch basins can put harmful substances into the water system as well.
“We vacuum our catch basins once a year to remove debris and look for hydrocarbons or residues that may have gotten in there due to illegal dumping. We keep an eye on it,” he said. “Some cities do it once a year and there are some that don’t do it at all.”
“These things are not in the plan, but the EPA indicated we’re not just doing what’s required, we go the extra mile,” he said.
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