© Sonny Sonnenschein

Jefferson County Green Infrastructure Assessment, WV

The Conservation Fund's Freshwater Institute teamed with the Strategic Conservation program and Jefferson County, WV to produce an assessment of the county's green infrastructure.

The services provided by the Fund included:

  • Initial Scoping and Planning
  • Facilitated the process for including public and professional input
  • Developed Work Plan
  • Performed Geospatial Analysis
  • Revised Analysis Based on Public Input

Jefferson County Planning Meeting

Summary

Jefferson County, WV is imperiled by fragmented patterns of growth that disrupt normal ecosystem functions, community vitality, and limiting future opportunities. The continued protection of the County’s diverse natural and rural landscapes, and economic vitality rely on the conservation of its unique ecological and cultural geography.

Challenge

Current land conservation efforts in the United States are largely reactive, site specific, narrowly focused, and poorly integrated with land use planning and growth management efforts. Developing a set of recommendations to conserve the green infrastructure of Jefferson County represents an opportunity to guide the pattern of future growth and development by incorporating green infrastructure into land use planning to provide a framework for sustainable development.

Solution

Green Infrastructure provides a strategic approach to land and water conservation that identifies conservation priorities and provides a planning framework for conservation and development. Emphasizing the importance of protecting large blocks of contiguous land and establishing connectivity, a green infrastructure approach aims to establish a matrix of natural areas, conservation lands, and working landscapes.

Results

Incorporating community and professional comments, The Conservation Fund and Freshwater Institute produced a report and datasets identifying the most valuable and vulnerable lands for protection and appropriate areas for development.

Benefits:

  • Sustained Quantity and Quality of Ground and Surface Waters
  • Vital Agricultural Community and Working Landscapes
  • Preserved Cultural Legacy
  • Protected Habitat
  • Consideration of natural resource conservation, environmental and public health, and quality of life issues in the land use planning process
  • Provides predictability and certainty
Spotlight: Applied Science
White River National Fish Hatchery

White River NFH parital reuse system

 

2005 Association of Conservation Engineers Carl V. Anderson Award of Merit Project

 
 

Two partial water reuse systems were designed and constructed utilizing existing infrastructure to augment the hatchery's limited water supply. The two systems allow the hatchery to raise upwards of 200,000 Atlantic salmon smolts for recovery efforts in the Connecticut River watershed using just 640 gpm of well water.
In Your Words

In Your Words

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