Crofton Stormwater Project

57% of Crofton homes empty runoff into Beaver Creek, causing over 20 million gallons of stormwater to be piped into Beaver Creek with each inch of rain. The cost to manage that runoff in a stormwater facility would be $26.7 million! The rest have landscaping that receives the rain, cleans, infiltrates it into the ground, and allows it to become a constant flow to creeks and to aquifers from which drinking water is drawn.

The Crofton Stormwater Project has the goal of retrofitting 10,000 residences, businesses, churches, and schools (population 30,000), to catch the rain and infiltrate it into the soil, as the basis for restoring and ceasing pollution of the creeks, streams, and rivers in this area of the Patuxent River Watershed and the South River Watershed.

Beginning two years ago with a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the Project has informed Crofton on stormwater runoff issues through: a community meeting; the construction of four demonstration rain gardens; installation of a large rain garden at St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church with a partnership between the Church and the Chesapeake Bay Trust; curb cuts in a parking lot at Crofton Woods Elementary School to infiltrate water in the adjacent forested area; installation of two rain gardens at the Crofton Town Hall—one dug by volunteers from Bay Area Church, and the other a Crofton Girl Scout project; and a teaching/field trip for 5th grade Crofton elementary school students. Current work underway includes the installation of a large rain garden at the intersection of Routes 424 and 3, and a water diversion project at a business on Route 450. The Project also consults continually with individual homeowners concerning rain garden and rain barrel installation.

These efforts to alleviate stormwater runoff into the Beaver Creek Restoration Area--by encouraging homeowners, businesses, churches, and schools to install rain barrels, rain gardens, and curb cuts to infiltrate stormwater on-site and direct runoff into forested areas--were just evaluated. The study results show that significant energies were generated—enough for the project to continue beyond the grant from NFWF. See the presentation of the Crofton Stormwater Project in the attached PDF below.