
By Sabri Ben-Achour
The EPA is awarding millions of dollars to groups to find innovative ways to keep pollution out of the Chesapeake Bay.
At the Walter Reed Community Center in Arlington, there's basically a wild field growing on the roof.
"So when it rains that water is absorbed initially by the plants on the roof, they have lots of mature trees that they protect," says Hedrick Belin, president of the Potomac Conservancy.
The green roof and the trees and the drainage areas and other things are all designed to keep storm water from going into gutters and carrying pollution to the Chesapeake Bay.
Beilin just got $500,000 from the EPA to help counties throughout Virginia promote this sort of building.
"One of the challenges in places like Arlington or Montgomery County, they're fairly sophisticated but in many of the other counties in Maryland and Virginia they don't have that expertise," he says.
The Potomac Conservancy is just one grant recipient. Other groups are getting almost $6 million to implement projects of their own.

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