Stormwater Run-Off
What is Stormwater Runoff?
Stormwater runoff occurs when precipitation from rain flows over the ground. Impervious surfaces like driveways, sidewalks, and streets prevent stormwater runoff from naturally soaking into the ground.
Stormwater can pick up debris, chemicals, dirt, and other pollutants and flow into a storm sewer system or directly to a lake, stream, river, wetland, or coastal water. Anything that enters a storm sewer system is discharged untreated into the waterbodies we use for swimming, fishing and providing drinking water.
http://water.epa.gov/action/weatherchannel/stormwater.cfm
To prevent harmful pollutants from being washed or dumped into a waterway, it is important that we all do our part!!
Where does rain water go??
- Goes down a storm drain that ultimately leads to a waterway
- Flows to a waterway
- It is used by plants
- Soaks into the ground to replenish the aquifer
- It evaporates
