Rain Gardens Help Keep Bay Clean

According to an article in The Baltimore Sun, twenty percent of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay come from fertilizer, animal waste, and other contaminants found in stormwater. To help mitigate this pollution local governments, nonprofits, schools, jails are building bioretention sites to filter the runoff water before it hits the local waterways.

Also know as rain gardens, the Sun article highlights a 9,903 square foot rain garden that will be built by Trinity School in Ellicott City partnership between the Office of Community Sustainability and the Ellicott City-based Center for Watershed Protection on the school grounds. Over 1,000 such sites are located in Howard County.

The Baltimore Sun reports:

A bioretention site is a garden that catches and soaks up rainwater and runoff from nearby lawns and impervious surfaces, including parking lots, patios and roofs. Rain gardens look similar to typical gardens, but are dug deeper and include a mixture of soil, sand and compost.

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At the Trinity School, the bioretention site will be designed to capture just over an inch of rainfall per storm, Hoffmann said. The school was a good choice for the bioretention site because of its available space near the discharge from the campus’ main water runoff pipes, meaning that the rain garden will easily catch stormwater runoff.

Read The Baltimore Sun to learn more.

Learn more about rain gardens and other local efforts to empower communities and residents to protect their environments at the MACo Summer Conference session “Green is the New Black.” The session will be held 2:15 -3:15 pm, Friday, August 17.

The 2018 MACo Summer Conference will be held August 15-18 at the Roland Powell Convention Center in Ocean City, Maryland. This year’s theme is “Water, Water Everywhere.”

Learn more about MACo’s Summer Conference: