Yuliya Libkina on Flickr

Earth Day Homage #2

Yes, we are very, very glad to see the rain these days. It seems the drought here on the east coast may have ended,or abated some­what,  at least until sum­mer comes.

See­ing a rainy day is good when it means the lakes have a lit­tle water in them again. With all the cli­mate changes there is no guar­an­tee that it will stay this way, though.

Droughts have been just part of the new and seem­ingly ever chang­ing weather lately.  If not too dry, then too wet…flooding has been a prob­lem in many areas lately, too.

Since this month we are think­ing about Earth Day and what we are doing to impact the envi­ron­ment, today I want to talk specif­i­cally about the impact of how to han­dle the water falling in and on your landscape.

Stormwa­ter man­age­ment is a big issue in many juris­dic­tions these days. There are stormwa­ter util­i­ties being set up with the power to charge for stormwa­ter man­age­ment, just as you are charged for water and sewer ser­vices.  Why charge peo­ple for stormwa­ter man­age­ment?  Well, in places like my old stomp­ing grounds of Fair­fax County, VA, the bill for stream restora­tion caused by stormwa­ter dam­age is over $1 bil­lion.

Yes, that’s a big B…and that is a lot of money even for a rel­a­tively well-funded county such as Fair­fax. It bog­gles my mind that stormwa­ter could cause such enor­mous prob­lems, but it dri­ves home the seri­ous­ness of the issue.  I have seen homes whose back yards have all but been elim­i­nated by stormwa­ter choked creeks.  For a home­owner, you bet­ter believe watch­ing your lit­tle piece of heaven being washed away dur­ing a storm event is no laugh­ing mat­ter.

Peo­ple some­times ask how can they be held respon­si­ble for water falling on and then leav­ing  their prop­erty.   The short answer is you are only held respon­si­ble for how much imper­vi­ous sur­face you have on your prop­erty, not how much rain falls there.  If you have to pave over par­adise, you have to pay for the out­come.

Imper­vi­ous sur­faces such as roofs, patios, side­walks and dri­ve­ways con­tribute to the stormwa­ter prob­lems we face today.  Water has no chance to infil­trate the ground or recharge the ground water when it hur­ries off the prop­erty.  This runoff is has­tened by imper­vi­ous sur­faces, because there is noth­ing to stop or slow down the water as it leaves.

Ero­sion occurs and water qual­ity is impacted when this runoff car­ries with it soil,  tox­ins and chem­i­cals from your yard.  In the end, we all pay, but the munic­i­pal­i­ties are the ones pay­ing the biggest bills, so now they are begin­ning to charge for this pub­lic ser­vice.  You can how­ever, mit­i­gate your own stormwa­ter and elim­i­nate the need to assess your prop­erty

There are sev­eral things you can do to improve water qual­ity right in your own yard.

You do this by man­ag­ing your stormwa­ter. In the world of archi­tec­ture and con­struc­tion, this is called Low Impact Devel­op­ment, of which there are Best Man­age­ment Prac­tices (BMP) that you can implement.

One really great BMP is using per­me­able paving. Per­me­able paving lets the water per­co­late down into the ground instead of run­ning off your prop­erty.  There are all kinds of per­me­able paving mate­ri­als out there and there is a good solu­tion for every appli­ca­tion that costs lit­tle more than tra­di­tional paving methods.

Another BMP is a res­i­den­tial rain gar­den. A rain gar­den is a depres­sion where water tol­er­ant plants are planted.   This rain gar­den is designed to catch the “first flush” from the prop­erty, not con­tain all the stormwa­ter.  It col­lects and slows water leav­ing the prop­erty, fil­ter­ing out tox­ins and chem­i­cals before they reach the water sources.   A rain gar­den is a lot of fun to plan and plant.   It is a super sus­tain­able way to impact drink­ing water sup­plies, nat­ural resources and the local ecology.

A veg­e­tated swale is a very easy BMP to imple­ment. You basi­cally make a small trench and grow grass there.  Often in more rural areas veg­e­tated swales, i.e.  ditches, are used instead of  storm drains and pipes.  While some may think this less than attrac­tive, in fact it is an excel­lent way to slow down the rain water as it leaves your prop­erty and it gives the water a chance to per­co­late down.   Yours does not need to be 5 feet across.  A  6″ veg­e­tated swale located in the right place on slopes will do an amaz­ing job with stormwa­ter. You don’t have to limit your­self to tur­f­grasses for your veg­e­tated swale, either.  There are some fan­tas­tic native grasses, like switch grass or lit­tle bluestem,  that would add habi­tat as well as supe­rior storm water management.

Green roofs are another BMP, and have been used increas­ingly in com­mer­cial con­struc­tion.   As the tech­nol­ogy becomes more main­stream, as it is now, the cost for green roofs is com­ing down to a price that home­own­ers can afford.  It’s some­thing to con­sider if you are build­ing or replac­ing your roof.

One last item to exam­ine is water har­vest­ing. Sav­ing rain­wa­ter for use out­doors saves drink­ing water sup­plies that are often run­ning short.   After a small ini­tial invest­ment you have free water for your land­scape that will not be affected by any munic­i­pal water restric­tions, or wells run­ning low. Rain bar­rels have made a big come­back and with all the trendy designs you will be able to find one that meets your needs and your aesthetics.

A small word about col­lect­ing rain­wa­ter.  In the West­ern states, this is becom­ing a hotly con­tested issue.  For a taste of the con­tro­versy, check out the Water Law Blog.  Lots of inter­est­ing thoughts there.  I guess the rest of the coun­try isn’t going to war over water…yet.

Imple­ment­ing stormwa­ter man­age­ment, rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing,  and low impact devel­op­ment BMP’s will make a real dif­fer­ence in pro­tect­ing water resources.

It’s one easy thing you can do in your own back­yard this Earth Day that will  save you money, have an imme­di­ate impact in the envi­ron­ment, and make you feel like a bil­lion bucks.

For those of us in rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing per­mis­si­ble places, here are just a few of the rain bar­rel styles avail­able these days, cour­tesy of Plow and Hearth

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Con­toured Rain Barrels

North­land Water Tank