Stormwater runoff—rain and melting snow that flows onto lawns from pavements and rooftops—often creates erosion, flooding, and winter icing problems for resident-owned communities and the homeowners living in them.

That water running through your lot or into, and perhaps out of, your community can also create environmental problems when it carries pollutants and excessive nutrients to our streams, ponds, and lakes; puddles roads; saturates leach fields; or undermines the foundation slabs or piers of manufactured homes.

If channeling runoff away from our lots and communities isn’t the answer, what is?

There are relatively easy, low-cost, alternatives to help avoid those problems, while retaining as much water as possible for gardening and replenishing aquifers.

New Hampshire’s Dept. of Environmental Services (DES) has a website, Soak Up The Rain New Hampshire, that offers great ideas for solving runoff problems on your lot, or in your community, and invites you—as an individual or a cooperative—to partner with them in protecting clean water. The site also contains helpful do-it-yourself fact sheets as well as a more-comprehensive Homeowner’s Guide to Stormwater Management. In other words, all the information you need to control and conserve rainwater.

I’m installing infiltration trenches along my driveway in hopes of keeping it from becoming a sheet of ice next winter. Check out the DES website and see what solutions might work for you.

Chris Clasby is Director of Acquisitions and ROC Lending for ROC-NH™.

ROC-NH™ is a program of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, Inc. and a ROC USA^® Certified Technical Assistance Provider.
ROC-NH is a registered service mark of ROC USA, LLC.