Rain drain
Storm water runoff is one of the biggest pollutants in the Great Lakes, and it's expensive to clean up. But some government officials are creating rain gardens — alternatives to traditional technologies that are cheaper, more natural and more efficient.
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| A cover crop of cosmos, an annual flower, grow in a Meridian Township, Mich., neighborhood. The cosmos are planted until the seeded native perennials develop their root structure and flower. |
The clouds billow and darken; a thunderstorm erupts, dumping rain on Any Neighborhood, Mich. It hits the roofs, slides down into the gutter spouts and washes out onto the ground like a waterfall. Then it reaches the storm drains. As it rushes through the pipes and out into the river, it eventually finds its way to one of the Great Lakes.
This storm water brings insidious donations: fertilizer from the newly treated lawn, pesticides from the garden, the contents of a doggy bag someone left behind because they didn’t want to carry it home, dirt from the empty lot, salt from winter roads, e. coli from the leaking septic field just outside of the city limits and oil. Lots of oil. Oil from petroleum-based asphalt roofs and driveways. Oil from the one in 10 cars that leak it.
And it is repeated over and over. Without meaning to, just about every citizen pollutes every time it rains.
“What we used to regard as benign is not,” Congressman John Dingell, D-Mich., said at an October conference focusing on the restoration of the Rouge River in southeast Michigan. “Runoff from our roofs and lawns is now regarded as one of the biggest threats to the Great Lakes region,” he said.
Despite the significant danger and large number of pollutants from different sources, legislators continue to battle the federal government for funding to clean up the waters. Dingell expressed concern that federally mandated programs are funded at one-third to one-half of what is needed for adequate cleanup.
In the meantime, there are people and communities who aren’t waiting. A trendy, simple landscape design is providing some urban communities with a quick solution to keep pollution and money from going down the drain.
Rain gardens are an engineered landscape design using native plants and well-drained soil to clean and recycle storm water runoff in urban areas. Their deep root systems soak up excess water and filter out pollutants, leaving behind clean water. Re-establishing a landscape that can handle run-off is the quickest, easiest and most practical solution to storm water pollution, according to some experts who’ve tried it in Michigan.
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| A rain garden in its second season grows in Lathrup Village, Mich. Typically, rain gardens grow native Michigan plants, including joe pye weed, purple coneflowers, swamp milkweed and blue flag iris. |
In the summer of 2005, Lathrup Village in northeast Detroit was the first community in Michigan to install a rain garden system, according to Jeffrey Mueller, city administrator.
“We have ditches and no curbs,” Mueller said. “We had big-time standing water problems and all the ditches drained into the Rouge River. Now the roadside drainage is managed by the gardens, rather than pipes to the river. This spring and summer with all the rainfall, we had [no standing water] at all.”
Administrators like the financial benefits as well. The system requires no fertilizer, water or mowing.
“Basically, a rain garden needs native planting, sand and compost,” Mueller said. “We had to buy the sand, but we’re blessed with our waste authority, which delivered 400 yards worth of leaves and waste compost for the beds. The city provided the plants and volunteers planted.”
After the initial investment in money and labor, rain gardens require only annual maintenance — when homeowners with rain gardens on their property remove invasive plants and weeds and add fresh mulch to keep the soil damp. They do this in the same vein as they would mow or weed the public property between the sidewalk and the road in front of their home.
According to Mueller, there haven’t been any problems with maintenance because rain gardens are optional. Not every home lines the street with a rain garden, but Mueller said he gets more requests for them all the time. It’s less mowing, watering and fertilizing for the homeowner, and they feel like they’re doing something to prevent pollution, he said.
Rain Gardens En Masse
Not all rain gardens are small plots on private property. Patrick Lindemann, the Ingham County (Mich.) drain commissioner, proposed an 11-acre storm water retention system — which took the rain garden concept to a higher level — when homeowners complained about flooding problems in one neighborhood.
Using engineering technology and landscape design, he developed a retention basin to manage storm water runoff, creating a wildlife refuge and neighborhood park in the process. Dog walkers, bird watchers and artists are now part of the regular activity there. The roots from the plants filter and recharge the ground water supply and prevents the oil, chemicals and other pollutants from washing away.
Instead of spending $20 million to divert the untreated pollution into the nearby Grand River, the residents spent $6.1 million to keep the water confined to the area, clean it and have a neighborhood park, wildlife refuge and, as Lindemann said, “an outdoor classroom.”
Do-It-Yourself Rain Gardens
The best part of the whole rain garden concept is that one doesn’t need to be a county drain commissioner or city administrator to create one. In fact, as Lindemann said, it is all about behavior.
And changing behavior is what’s needed to have the natural waste water treatment plant Lindemann built become a true wildlife refuge with clean water.
When Howard Knorr of Beverly Hills, Mich., retired, his wife told him he had to do something. So he joined Friends of the Rouge, an organization with the goal of cleaning up the Rouge River in southeast Michigan. That group led him to a workshop about rain gardens.
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| Jeffrey Mueller, city administrator for Lathrup Village, Mich., kneels in the award-winning rain garden for the Rouge River. |
When direct runoff from roofs to gutters to sewers was outlawed, residents had to disconnect their gutter downspouts. “We put barrels in to catch it, then they would overflow,” Knorr said. That’s when his wife, Frances, noticed they had many of the native plants recommended for a rain gardens. “The area was holding water from the barrel overflow, and the grass was greener around it,” he said.
Knorr doesn’t admit to being an environmentalist. “I’m not that knowledgeable,” he said. “But I have been called a tree hugger.”
Knorr and his wife attribute their love of gardening and the discovery of their accidental rain garden to the actual rain garden they developed later. “In front of our house, we have an island. As a result of the street being repaved, a ridge kept water in,” he said. “So we decided to put in a rain garden. We planted so the water went into the garden. The street is now dry where there used to be puddles.”
To the neighborhood resident, the municipal official and the city administrator, there is no debate about rain gardens being the most practical and cost effective solution to standing water and non-point source pollution problems. It’s a way for homeowners as well as business owners to take responsibility for the social behavior responsible for polluting.
And as Lindemann said, “The end result is water that goes into the river will be 100 percent clear.
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Carol Navarro is a senior studying journalism at MSU. This is her second appearance in EJ. Reach Carol at navarr16@msu.edu.
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