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During the past seven years, the Intergovernmental Stormwater Committee has exceeded its requirement to reduce the amount of sediment that annually flows into area streams by more than 700,000 pounds per year, according to ISC stormwater coordinator Chelsey Weyant.
The requirement of the seven-year Department of Environmental Protection permit cycle -- initially five years long -- was to shrink the amount of sediment washed into area streams in the committee's nine-municipality urbanized area in central Blair County by 1.4 million pounds per year.
That represented a 10% reduction.
The 36 projects that the ISC completed eliminated 2.1 million pounds, according to Weyant, speaking at an ISC meeting Thursday in connection with a final report on the permit cycle, which expires at the end of this year.
It's uncertain whether the overage will benefit the committee's operations under the next permit to be issued by DEP, according to Weyant.
That next permit will measure compliance by reduction of runoff volume -- as opposed to sediment weight, officials have said.
If DEP does provide credit for the "extra," it's uncertain whether that would mean less of a volume reduction to be required or some "indirect" benefit, she said.
"DEP hasn't come out one way or another," she said.
The committee's two biggest projects were a floodplain restoration on 0.8 miles of the Beaverdam Branch of the Juniata River between Plank Road and halfway through Legion Park and the dredging of the pond at Lakemont Park.
The Beaverdam project was expected to prevent perhaps a million pounds of sediment from entering the stream, while the dredging was expected to trap a little more than 500,000 pounds of sediment per year.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.