Cleaning Up Broad Creek - WMDT 47 News - Delmarva's Choice

LAUREL, Del. - 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, and the towns of Laurel and Bethel are doing just that.

The federal government is stepping in to help two Delaware towns with a major project.  David O'Neil, Director of the Eastern Partnership Office for National Fish and Wildlife Foundation said

"This is an example of how a community has come together and said we're interested in improving the quality of our water, we're interested in creating amenities that are going to benefit our town."

The two towns will share a $100,000 grant from the EPA to design environmentally friendly infrastructure and construction plans for projects along the Broad Creek.

This project will do more than keep the local waterways clean, it'll also help prevent flooding and since the Broad Creek leads into the Chesapeake Bay watershed, this is really all a domino affect that impacts all of DelMarVa.

"We have a situation in our community where in heavy storms, we have a couple of blocks in town where we don't have our storm drain separated from our sanitary sewer system and what that does in a big rainstorm is it overloads our waste water treatment plants capacity," said Laurel's Mayor, John Shwed.

That can cause extensive flooding along Laurel's 6th street and delivers polluted runoff water from the roads, into the creek.

Politicians see the positive affects on both the local environment and people as a good thing.  Congressman John Carney told us "it's really a win, win, win for the town of Laurel and for Bethel with some of the flooding problems they have over there."

In order to receive the grant, Laurel and Bethel had to first come up with over $82,000 dollars in matching funds.  The town of Greenwood was also awarded $35,000 to restore the banks along the Cart Branch Tax Ditch in Brenda Jones Park.