Rain Gardens: A beautiful solution to stormwater pollution.
Every time it rains or snow melts, the streets, driveways, parking lots and your lawn get a bath. Dirt, oil gasoline, gravel, salt, pet waste and lawn chemicals are washed away into the storm drains. Ultimately, stormwater (rain and melted snow), and the pollutants within it, enters our rivers through outfalls – the big drains you see along the riverbanks. Many Calgarians are already taking simple actions, such as using rain barrels and washing their car at the carwash, to help protect our rivers’ water quality.
A fairly new concept to Calgary are rain gardens, which provide another way for residents to help make a difference in protecting our rivers, fish and our source of drinking water. A rain garden is a landscaped feature that replaces an area of your lawn in order to collect the stormwater (rain and melted snow) that runs off your lawn, roof and driveway. This shallow depression has loose, deep soil that absorbs and naturally filters stormwater runoff before it enters the storm drains you see along the street, thus reducing the amount of polluted water that enters the storm system.
For more information about other actions you can take to help protect our rivers or to download a rain garden factsheet visit www.calgary.ca/waterservices or call 3-1-1.
#1 by Sonny on June 1, 2010 - 5:35 pm
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If neighbors are using their rain gutters to channel rainwater into their barrels, cisterns, or whatever and also channel it into their rain gardens, I certainly would like to suggest that these neighbors remember to keep their rain gutters sparkling clean. How? I use the newly developed rain gutter cleaning tool called a Gutter Clutter Buster, which I purchased on-line, that connects snuggly to my shop vac and actually vacuums out all debris in my gutters. The debris settles into the vac canister and when finished I dump the canister into my compost pile. Hopefully, others can see how they can save money and add to the environment a safer, cleaner, and easier method of cleaning out our rain gutters.