Friends of the Rappahannock, a conservation organization dedicated to promoting the protection of the natural, scenic and historical values of the Rappahannock River and its tributaries, held a workshop on Low-Impact Development (LID) earlier this month in Fredericksburg, Va. Up to 40 local government elected officials, planning commission members and planners from Spotsylvania, Stafford and Fauquier counties and the City of Fredericksburg attended the workshop.

The LID approach to stormwater management minimizes site alterations as much as possible by incorporating natural landscape design techniques to control runoff both during and after construction. The purpose of the workshop was to expose local government officials in the Rappahannock River Basin in Virginia to the differences between LID and conventional stormwater management practices, and how LID techniques can be incorporated into a site design to address stormwater runoff in a more cost-effective way.

Arlington County (Va.) Supervisor Paul Ferguson, briefed the attendees on the various conservation-oriented development programs in the county. He cited a pilot project in the county designed to award appropriate bonus density points to developers who incorporated “green technology” in their building designs, and his work with nonprofit organizations such as the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust, a private nonprofit land trust, which works to preserve open space in Arlington.

He also recognized the efforts of another nonprofit, the Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment, which provides environmental education and volunteer opportunities to county residents and is supported primarily by the Arlington County government under a grant from the Department of Environmental Services Solid Waste Division.

Many other speakers were on hand to introduce the attendees to the basic principles of stormwater management and LID, including Richard Street, director of the Tri-County/City Soil and Water Conservation District, Larry Gavan, Urban Programs manager from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Neil Weinstein, executive director of the Low-Impact Development Center in Prince George’s County, Md. and John Slusser, town manager of Wausau, Va.

Near the end of the meeting, John Tippett, executive director of the Friends of the Rappahannock, described the Central Rappahannock Roundtable Consensus Process, which was conceived as a joint project of the Center for Watershed Protection and the Friends of the Rappahannock.

Tippet explained that the roundtable consisted of 35 members — from Stafford and Spotsylvania counties and City of Fredericksburg — who identified local codes and ordinances that impede conservation oriented site design, and developed recommendations on how these codes might be amended to foster more environmentally-friendly development.

The workshop ended with a field trip to view a demonstration of a local bioretention practice, a landscaped island of plants and small trees that treat and control stormwater runoff from a parking lot in one of the larger shopping centers in Fredericksburg.

Friends of the Rappahannock and the Tri County/City Water Soil and Water Conservation District plan to hold another LID workshop for local engineers and planners in the next few months. For more information on the Friends of the Rappahannock activities and the LID Workshop, please contact John Tippet at (540) 373-3448, e-mail at cleanriver@pobox.com. Their Web address is www.for.communitypoint.org.

(For more information on the NACo’s education and outreach program on stormwater management, please contact James Davenport at (202) 661-8807)