Municipal Rain Garden
What happens when 14 billion gallons of stormwater per year meet a hundred-year old system of pipes that is merged with the sewage system and is over 1600 miles long? As you can probably imagine, the result is really not pretty. But your Ecosystem Garden can help alleviate this problem, and we’ll get to that in a minute.
But first, why is stormwater such a problem?
Mainly because we, in our infinite wisdom, have decided to treat stormwater like toxic waste, to be immediately removed from our presence and directing it off our properties and into a series of pipes that ultimately pushes this water into our streams.
There are many problems with this approach, which can be illustrated by the recent efforts of Philadelphia to address these issues:
- Over 60% of Philadelphia has a combined stormwater/sewage system. Even a quarter inch of rain can overwhelm this system and send road oil, litter, and raw sewage – gushing from 164 pipes directly into the Delaware River, the Schuylkill River, and Tacony, Pennypack, and Cobbs Creeks. Bacteria levels skyrocket. (Note: don’t eat the fish!)
- We have sealed the surface of the city with buildings, roads, parking lots, shopping centers, and business parks, giving the rain no way to soak slowly into the soil to be absorbed into groundwater systems.
- What open ground remains has become so compacted from constant mowing that rainwater is unable to permeate that soil either.
The city of Philadelphia has just announced a 1.6 BILLION dollar plan (over 20 years) to create a system of rain gardens, green roofs, permeable paving, and other green techniques to deal with this serious stormwater problem. Why! Consider these recent examples of the problem:
- We recently had over 6 inches of rain in just two hours, which caused a huge mudslide and shut down the major highway into and out of the city.
- In my neighborhood, there is one road good road out of the neighborhood and into the downtown area. This road runs along a creek which floods almost every time it rains, causing massive traffic backups and delays as this road is closed.
- There are certain neighborhoods in the city which experience major flooding with almost every rain storm. Streets become impassable and basements are filled with water.
This 1.6 billion dollars is going to come out of our pockets as taxpayers. There is a much better solution aside from requiring new construction projects to devise a plan to manage the rainwater on that site.
We can each learn to manage rainwater on our own properties and let it serve its natural function, and that is where our Ecosystem Gardens come in.
Here are some examples:
- Rain barrels are easy to install, and provide a source of irrigation water that can be used during dry times.
- Rain gardens are beautiful and act as filters, removing pollutants from the rain water and keeping those toxins out of our streams.
- Green roofs require a little more technical expertise, but provide welcome habitat for wildlife, and keep our houses warmer in winter and cooler in summer, reducing the cost of home heating and cooling.
- Rainwater can be directed into a wildlife pond to be used by dragonflies, birds, frogs, toads, salamanders, and more.
- Resources for managing rainwater on your property can be found here.
What are you doing to manage rain water on your property?
© 2009 – 2010, Carole Brown. All rights reserved.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Is the city providing any help to homeowners who want to tackle the problem? Kansas City, Missouri has the 10,000 rain gardens project and they provide education. I thought they also provided some form of funding, but perhaps that has been discontinued.
http://www.rainkc.com/
Alison Kerr´s last post ..Beautiful Fall Berries – Kansas Natives
Right now the city is struggling with a pretty massive budget deficit as Pennsylvania has yet to pass a budget. The are working with 14 neighborhoods where this is most needed and are attempting to come up with funds to provide rain barrels. That aside, rain gardens aren’t hard to install, nor are they very expensive, so if we each did our part we could solve a lot of the problem despite the budget issues.
I think the most valuable thing a city could do would be to disseminate information, to showcase success stories and to get neighbors speaking to neighbors.
One of my neighbors had 3 different landscapers come round to talk with her about retaining wall needs. She has a lot of water flowing through her back yard which is a challenge. She was actually told by at least one landscaper that rain gardens don’t work because they harbor mosquitoes. I told her that I don’t believe that’s true. But neither of us knows of anyone local with a successful rain garden.
I have lots of water flowing through my garden. But most of it comes from the roofs of 3 of my neighbors and the volume is too large for me to deal with in a rain garden. However, there is no incentive for my neighbors to handle the problem because it doesn’t affect their gardens. This is where I think a campaign to raise awareness and success stories could help. At least then if I went to talk with the neighbors they’d know what I was talking about.
Also, landscape designers and master gardeners need to better understand how to handle water in the home landscape. One landscape designer I spoke with didn’t want to change the water flow in my yard in case it caused foundation problems. He just didn’t want to be responsible and didn’t know enough to advise me.
I don’t know about in Pennsylvania but when it rains here in NE Kansas the volume of water that comes down is huge (almost always several inches in a day) and basement and foundation problems are pretty commonplace. As much as anything there’s a real lack of engineering knowledge among professionals in the community to deal with water I think.
Alison Kerr´s last post ..Can We “Out Nature” Mother Nature in Our Gardens?
Alison makes a great point about municipalities supporting rain garden and rain barrel efforts. I’m hopeful that once Philly gets on the other side of its current fiscal crisis that they’ll go in this direction. The mayor has created a cabinet-level position of “Director of Sustainability” who is looking at this and many other issues. Hopefully they will publicize success stories of individual homeowners, as you suggest.
I live in Whitpain Township in Montgomery County. My family and I started an environmental group called Wissahickon Growing Greener (WGG) back in April. We have been creating rain barrels made from 55 gallon food-grade, recycled barrels for our group members (made about 45 so far!) The cost to them is only $30.00 ($50.00 for non-members). We felt like it was a great way to 1. get the word out about our group, and 2. to help people deal with storm-water management issues for very little money. I had grand hopes of having a “rain barrel” street, but only one other neighbor has opted to use one. If there’s a way our group can help you, let me know. Check https://www.bigtent.com/groups/wggg.
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