The entrance to One Montgomery Plaza in Norristown, where many county offices are housed. Credit: Montgomery County Commissioners
The event is Thursday night.
Montgomery is hosting a public open house focused on the Whitemarsh Wissahickon Floodplain Restoration Project on Thursday, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., at the Whitemarsh Township Building, 616 Germantown Pike, Lafayette Hill, PA 19444.
The open house offers an opportunity to learn about the county’s efforts to restore approximately 11 acres of floodplain along the Wissahickon Creek in Whitemarsh Township. The project team will be sharing informational posters and collecting public feedback, and the project consultant will give a presentation at 6 p.m.
Montgomery County owns the property, which is stewarded by the county’s division of parks, trails, and historic sites. The site experienced flood and wind damage during Hurricane Ida in September 2021 and was further disturbed and stripped of vegetation during subsequent cleanup efforts.
The resulting damage presented the county with an opportunity to restore the land to be even more resilient and ecologically robust than its original condition. The county hired ecological restoration experts Biohabitats to conduct the design and engineering work. Biohabitats has completed a considerable amount of site investigation, which has resulted in two alternative restoration approaches.
More information on the Whitemarsh Wissahickon Floodplain Restoration Project, including timeline, is available online here. Members of the public can also subscribe to updates on the project using this online form.
