Montgomery Soil and Water Conservation

Conservation Community News

Miami Valley Career Technology Center will be holding its annual Sophomore Career Days on December 8-10, 2009, at the campus on Hoke Road in Clayton. Hundreds of students from nineteen high schools in the Miami Valley will visit programs to explore potential career options. As a community partner, Montgomery Soil and Water Conservation District (MSWCD) provides administrative support for the Environmental and Natural Resources Tech Prep program. MSWCD thus encourages and supports young people to consider careers in conservation, also by sponsoring an annual scholarship.
Brookville developer Tom McCoy is building ten new homes in a wooded area next to the new Brookville Schools campus. Mr. McCoy is a conservation-minded person and had worked extensively to design lots and homes that preserved existing natural features, such as forest areas, while enhancing them with additional landscaping. Partnering with the Miami Conservancy District (MCD) and EnvisionWorks, Inc., a local company that specializes in conservation design, McCoy Homes Inc. expanded the project to include low impact land use practices that reduce stormwater runoff and increase infiltration to the aquifer. With funding from a Targeted Watershed Grant that MCD received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2004, each home will have a rain garden and a driveway made of pervious pavers. These practices will reduce the amount of runoff that would have otherwise flowed to Brookville’s municipal storm sewer. The runoff will now infiltrate through the pervious pavers and rain gardens into the ground, filtering out pollutants and replenishing the aquifer. Montgomery Soil and Water Conservation District, in partnership with MCD are pleased to see the City of Brookville work with a local developer to begin implementing innovative land use practices.