The Village of Royal Palm Beach could receive $250,000 to conduct stormwater management if a financing proposal makes it through the state legislative process this week.
Village Engineer Chris Marsh said the money would be used to develop a comprehensive stormwater management program in order to comply with Environmental Protection Agency and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System requirements.
No other municipality in Palm Beach County was included for similar funding in this legislative budget round, and Marsh said it’s the result of a grant application made by the village.
“There’s a lot of grants out there,” Marsh said. “Whether people are applying for them or not I guess is the question. We actively apply for a lot of different grants, and we’ve had success in getting them.”
He said the money would be used to conduct survey cross sections of the village’s canal system to evaluate the thickness of the muck as compared to the design cross sections, and develop a plan to bring the canals back to their original state.
“During construction and normal sedimentation processes, those sections have changed over time,” Marsh said. “There’s sections that are very shallow, which creates aquatic vegetation issues for us. Obviously for storm conveyance, it reduces capacity.”
The end goal is to bring the canals back to their original specifications.
“Step A will be to get the survey,” Marsh said. “Step B will be to evaluate the survey, and step C would be to start a dredging program to bring the sections back to their design state, or possibly to improve it in areas where we can do that by increasing the storage and depth.”
