Integrated Water Resource Municipal Permit Workshop Recently Held

The Venango Conservation District and cooperating agencies held another Integrated Water Resource Municipal Permitting Workshop.  That’s a mouthful, but the goal of the workshop was to educate the regulated community and municipalities about all the necessary permitting that needs to be in place before a building permit should be issued.  Land owners, contractors, consultants and municipalities all ask us to provide better information on what they should have in place before a building permit is issued.  We have worked together with the Venango County Regional Planning Commission, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the Sewage Enforcement Officer and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to provide several municipal permitting workshops in an effort to meet that need.

This most recent workshop took place on Friday February 12th at the PennDOT building in Oil City PA.  Twenty-six participants were in attendance.  They heard presentations on the following:

Subdivision and Land Development – Jason Ruggiero, VCRPC
Highway Occupancy Permits – PennDOT
Sewage Planning – Nick Melnick, Sewage Enforcement Officer
Erosion & Sediment Control and NPDES Permitting – Mike Swatzler, VCD
Stormwater Act 167 – Lance Bowes, VCD
Waterways Obstruction/Encroachment Permitting – Mike Swatzler, VCD
Act 166 Floodplain – Phil Gryskewicz, VCRPC
Building Code Enforcement – Becky Hosack, Girard Township
 
The feedback to our workshop was very positive, with participants requesting more events in the future.  We thank the Northwest Commission for providing funding to the district to provide these educational workshops.  We look forward to providing more workshops in the near future.