The foundation, which is an arm of the Home Builders Association of Kitsap County (HBA), recently received a grant that will allow it to retrofit the HBA’s Bremerton site to include bioretention stormwater runoff management methods and other elements such as pervious pavement.

The goal of the project is to educate builders, government representatives, and the public about alternatives to pervious surfaces and traditional stormwater runoff management.

“This is an on-site ground demonstration of installation and effectiveness of the technique,” said Art Castle, HBA executive vice president.

Public workshops, fact sheets, a Web site and other educational activities are planned, along with a documentary video of the process.

Several partners will be involved, including Kitsap County, the four city governments, nonprofit organizations and businesses representing several industries. About two dozen letters of support were included with the grant application.

The $40,000 grant from the Puget Sound Action Team and more than $90,000 worth of in-kind contributions will fund the low-impact development demonstration project. Nearly 80 applications were submitted for the grants and no more than a dozen projects were funded.

Rain gardens are an LID technique that allow the stormwater runoff to be processed on site. It is also an aesthetically pleasing feature that reduces the amount of pollutants carried by runoff. As LID methods have been growing in popularity on the West Coast, so have rain gardens as a form of sustainable building.

“This will be a showcase — and what better place than the Home Builders Association’s site,” says Kathleen Byrne-Barrantes, a local environmentalist and president of Grant Solutions, who prepared the grant application.