The following are highlights from Richland County Government in April:
• Richland County celebrated National County Government Month by encouraging residents to take active roles in local government. County employees were featured in a video that spotlighted “10 Ways to Get Involved.”
• Richland County celebrated Fair Housing Month with several community events, and County Council presented resolutions to local ambassadors of fair housing.
• Richland County announced a series of six flood recovery meetings to be held in May that will provide homeowners affected by the 2015 floods with information about registering for federal housing assistance.
• With the help of community volunteers, Richland County Stormwater Management staff marked storm drains throughout the County in an effort to prevent anything other than stormwater from entering the drains, as liquids that enter storm drains flow untreated into nearby waterways. April is National Storm Drain Marking Month.
• Students at Dutch Fork Elementary School used their first bags of compost in their school garden as part of a food scrap composting program supported by Richland County Solid Waste & Recycling.
• Richland County Utilities began a public campaign to let residents and businesses know about the dangers of letting fats, oils and grease (FOG) enter the County’s sanitary sewer system.
• Richland County Council congratulated the University of South Carolina Lady Gamecocks for their first NCAA National Basketball Championship by taking part in celebratory parade and presenting players and coaches with special tokens at a rally at the S.C. State House.
• Richland County Community Development celebrated National Community Development Week with several public events and helped organize a ribbon-cutting celebration for several new affordable housing units.
• The Richland Soil and Water Conservation District received a community involvement award from Lexington-Richland School District 5 for its mini-grant that helped fund a bioswale to improve stormwater drainage at the school’s outdoor classroom.
• Richland County held a special graduation ceremony for the residents who participated in the 2017 edition of Richland 101, an annual, multi-week course that provides an inside look at the services, programs and projects funded by tax dollars.
• Students helped Richland County Councilman Seth Rose and Richland County Conservation Commission members plant a tree at a local school in remembrance of a Conservation Commission member who recently passed away.
• Richland County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) held a volunteer appreciation luncheon to thank the hundreds of volunteers and County employees who serve as Guardians at Litem for local children needing representation in the family court system.
• Richland County celebrated the grand opening of a new public-use dock on the Broad River that was recently installed after the original was destroyed in the October 2015 floods.