POULSBO — With the receipt of a $263,000 grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology, the city of Poulsbo took another step forward in its low-impact development efforts.

The grant, which was announced Nov. 2, was the largest awarded in Kitsap County, and will allow the city to demonstrate LID practices for road and sidewalk improvements.

Those improvements will be visible on a 1,900-foot section of Caldart Avenue between Forest Rock Lane and Lincoln Road.

“It’s about education as much as it is the environment,” said City Engineer Andrzej Kasiniak.

In addition to featuring porous concrete, the project will also include two bio-swales and a biorention cell in a traffic island.

“There are several components to the project, and sidewalks are just one of them,” Kasiniak said.

A brochure, poster and other educational materials are also parts of the overall project, he said.

The grant will complete the funding for the Caldart work as the city enters the final stages of its 2007 budget cycle.

“It is intended to be a showroom,” said Mayor Kathryn Quade. “Developers will be able to see what they can do.”

With the city already working on adopting LID building standards and Olympic College-Poulsbo hosting an LID certification course, the Caldart Avenue project demonstrates the city’s continued commitment to both safety and the environment, Quade said.

That commitment and the hard work of those involved were instrumental in the city’s success in receiving the grant, said Councilwoman Connie Lord.

“It shows that we’re really staying on top of things,” Lord said, adding that the grant will allow the city to continue demonstrating practical ways of implementing LID standards.

“We need to show developers and citizens we are willing to take calculated risks,” Quade said.

Low-impact practices have been successfully used in other cities and states, so city leaders need to be willing to do their part to minimize the impacts of growth on the environment, she said.

Another important part of the city’s success in receiving the grant is the collaboration between all of the different agencies within the county, she said.

“There’s so much of it in Kitsap that I believe it made a difference,” Quade said.

In fact, three other groups in the county received funding for LID stormwater projects as well.The city of Bremerton took home $195,170; the Bainbridge Island School District received $145,313 and the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority was awarded $77,550.