Whitehall Township Public Works Department is the first-place recipient in Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PennDOT) Build a Better Mousetrap Contest for a project that prevents contaminating stormwater runoff.

“As the first-place winner, Whitehall Township’s invention will be entered in a regional competition with winners from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as in the national Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP),” PennDOT noted.

In Whitehall’s public works project, the LTAP program accorded the top honor for a salt shed entrance curtain built to reduce the exposure of salt stored in the shed to rain and thereby preventing it from contaminating stormwater runoff, which impressed the judges.

John Rackus, Whitehall Township Public Works Department director, said the honor goes to his personnel who erected the innovative curtain. In a previous year, the crew built the new salt shed.

The plaque presented to the department will be displayed prominently in the state-of-the-art public works facility.

Rackus said the department is now looking forward to the regional and national competitions.

“Built for less than $1,200 in materials, plus labor and equipment, the curtain helps to meet the township’s goal in ensuring good housekeeping and pollution prevention in municipal operations under minimum control measure No. 6, which is part of the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) permit requirements of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System,” PennDOT noted.

The Build a Better Mousetrap Contest is held annually to recognize municipalities that build better gadgets or develop improved ways of doing a transportation-related jobs.

Horsham Township, Montgomery County, and South Manheim Township, Schuylkill County, were runners-up in the contest.