--- Center for the Inland Bays Coordinating Retrofit Strategy with Local Communities ---

Stormwater running off our streets, parking lots and driveways is carrying a cargo of toxic chemicals, fertilizers, pet waste, and litter into the Inland Bays. Cleaning up pollution emanating from stormwater runoff is essential to improving the water quality and living resources in the Bays.

Along the coastal corridor from Rehoboth to Fenwick, runoff from impervious surfaces flows untreated and unfiltered into the Bays because most of the land was developed before controls were required. Nutrients, bacteria, and oils enter waters where they can harm aquatic life and people.

The Center for the Inland Bays is working with communities to meet its goal of treating 4,500 acres of this type of development through a process called stormwater retrofitting.

Click Here to Download First Draft of Strategy for Project Parterns

"Stormwater retrofits are stormwater management practices in locations where stormwater controls did not previously exist or were ineffective," says Chris Bason, Science Coordinator for the CIB.

Retrofitting is different than new stormwater design. "It involves a good deal of investigation to find opportunities to treat pollutants in communities where space is at a premium," said Bason, "treatment practices range from something as simple as rainbarrels that capture runoff from roofs, to 'constructed wetlands,' engineered to suck up nitrogen and phosphorus."

This year, a retrofit strategy is being produced for the 120 acres of urban land that drains untreated into the Anchorage Canal in the Town of South Bethany.
The Anchorage Canal is on the Little Assawoman Bay which suffers from chronically low dissolved oxygen and harmful-algal-blooms. The Town of South Bethany approached the CIB and the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) to assist, and was key in securing a grant for the assessment from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.

Jay Headman, a South Bethany town councilman and member of the SB Water Quality Committee said, “The town is extremely pleased to be working with the CIB, DelDOT, and surrounding towns to investigate ways that we can reduce stormwater runoff going directly into our canals and Inland Bays. The recommendations provided in this study should provide us with a blueprint for best ways to improve the current water quality.”

The Center for Watershed Protection of Ellicott City, MD and JMT engineering, national experts in the field of stormwater engineering, have been contracted to develop the strategy.

The assessment field day will begin August 19th when teams, consisting of engineers and community representatives, will canvas the project area to prioritize opportunities for retrofits.

“We’ve had great participation from DelDOT and communities like Sea Colony and Middlesex Beach that are in the project area. They are interested in how they can help to improve water quality,” said Bason.


The assessment will be used to direct retrofit implementation beginning next year.

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