Leaders met at JMU today to talk of ways to keep water clean around the Valley.

Around 100 people showed up to today's event. The main goal of the event was to train and advise personnel on maintaining the green projects that they may have in place. Mainly water pollution prevention.

Blacks Run is a concern for Harrisonburg. It has too much sediment and bacteria which leads to poor water quality and affects the local wildlife. Measures being done today help to protect the water for the future.

Some things you can do to protect the waterways are to compost and leave natural grass and leaf material on the ground. Rain barrels allow for the use of natural untreated water.

Thanh Dang says the cost of being greener now can save us money in the future. "It's cheaper to be greener now, in all of the activities that we do day to day, than it is for us to have some problem later and then having to fix it. Whether that's paid for by an individual or paid by a government, whether its local, state, or federal. I think we're seeing a lot of the costs come back to us."

After the workshop, there was a guided tour of JMU's storm water management projects.