The Southwest PA Commission Water Resources Center will host a series of webinars on green infrastructure and solar energy siting starting February 24. 

The programs include--

-- February 24: How to Effectively Maintain Blue/Green Infrastructure.  Jacobs Engineering will cover key programmatic elements, such as planning and design considerations for BGI O&M (especially in harsh urban settings and varying climates), potential barriers to implementation, as well as guidance in developing O&M Plans that cost-effectively support BGI programs.  Noon to 1:00 p.m.  Click Here to register.

-- March 16: Preparing Your Community for Solar Development: the SolSmart Program and Technical Assistance.  The national SolSmart Program (funded by the U.S. Department of Energy) offers free technical assistance to communities for navigating risks and capturing opportunities as the solar industry ramps up.

This workshop will describe the burgeoning market for solar energy and solar development, the components of ensuring your community is “solar-ready” to both capture benefits and minimize risks, and the solar-ready certification process and technical assistance opportunities.

Water quality and watershed issues will be addressed. Noon to 1:00 p.m.  Click Here to register.

-- April 20: Large-scale Solar Development: Water Quality Risk, or Green Infrastructure? The PV-SMaRT Project. The U.S. Department of Energy-funded the Photovoltaic Stormwater Management Research and Testing (PV-SMaRT) project to evaluate water quality impacts of large-scale solar development.

The study will create solar-specific runoff coefficients that consider type of ground cover, soil type, hydrology, slope, and solar array design based on field testing across the nation and 3-D modeling.

The project will also engage permit jurisdictions (authorities having jurisdiction, AHJs), from local to federal, to disseminate the findings and identify permitting best practices to make permitting transparent and predictable and improve water quality outcomes in our nation’s surface waters.

One potential implication of the study is understanding the conditions under which conversion of agricultural or disturbed land to solar development with appropriate ground cover could meet green infrastructure goals of improving water quality outcomes within impaired watersheds.  Noon to 1:00 p.m. Click Here to register.

Click Here for other Water Resource Center education resources.

Other Resources

The Water Resources Center also highlighted these other information resources--

-- Bridging The Equity Gap: Flood Resilience For The Whole Community

-- FEMA Resources for Climate Resilience

-- Benefits Of Improving Winter Maintenance Operations

-- EPA Drinking Water And Wastewater Resilience

For more information on these and other water-related topics, visit the Southwest PA Commission Water Resources Center webpage.

[Posted: January 19, 2022]

1/24/2022