- Virginia Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts

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VCAP Overview

We Can Help You…

Restore problem areas
Control and minimize erosion
Conserve water within the landscape
Improve riparian buffer areas
Promote wildlife habitat
Re-vegetate bare slopes
Stabilize drainage ways
Treat stormwater runoff

The Virginia Conservation Assistance Program (VCAP) is an urban cost-share program that provides financial incentives and technical and educational assistance to property owners installing eligible Best Management Practices (BMPs) in Virginia’s participating Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs).

These practices can be installed in areas of your yard where problems like erosion, poor drainage, or poor vegetation occur. Qualified sites shall be used for residential, commercial, or recreational purposes with a proposed practice that addresses a need.

We Help You Make a Difference…

*Erosion, poor ground cover, and runoff from impervious surfaces are examples of water quality issues that may be fixed with VCAP.*

Why do Virginia’s waters need improving? Nonpoint source pollution is the leading cause of water quality problems. Rainfall or snowmelt from suburban lawns, golf courses, and paved surfaces picks up and carries away natural and human-made pollutants depositing them into lakes, rivers, wetlands, coastal waters and ground waters.

Roads, parking lots, sidewalks, homes, and offices replace natural landscapes. Rainfall that once soaked into vegetated ground now becomes stormwater runoff, which flows directly into local waterways.

As more natural landscapes are converted to impermeable surfaces or managed turf, stormwater moves across them, carrying pollutants such as sediment and nutrients to vulnerable streams and rivers. Storm drains you see on the street do not provide any sort of water filtration.

Virginia’s Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) for the Chesapeake Bay identifies that urban/suburban runoff is contributing to impairment and efforts to retro-actively address stormwater runoff from existing impervious surfaces is a priority. VCAP is an opportunity to help you do your part to improve water quality.