Rain gardens planning to improve the community’s water quality
Emily Timmerman
Editor in Chief
Five Wooster students have applied for an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) grant to help reduce the quantity and improve the quality of storm water runoff in the city and on campus. While still in the application process, their green infrastructure project would create at least one rain garden to be built on the east side of campus. A second is planned off-campus at Jaycee Park.
The city of Wooster has been under intense scrutiny by the EPA, and has received a citation for dumping overflow from the water processing plant into the local watershed. Previously, the city’s wastewater treatment plant was discharging water into Killbuck Creek, that surpassed the permitted level of contamination, and there had been repeated cases where the discharged water was not sampled and analyzed to check for contamination levels. As it currently stands, the city is paying a $10,000 fine for these repeated violations to the Clean Water Act.
In addition to the EPA citation, storm water runoff is resulting in a significant amount of erosion south of the College due to the inclined elevation. The storm water runoff has also resulted in flooding.
The rain gardens that the team hopes to create would combine biotic and abiotic remediation pathways to accomplish quality-improvement of the water, while optimized the absorbative capacity of the soil to reduce overall storm water flow. In addition, Iron-Osorb (Fe-Osorb) will be incorporated in the rain gardens and will help to extract additional pollutants from the water.
“The college is positioning itself as a leader in environmental infrastructure,” explained Christine Kasprisin ’14. “The project will help educate town and campus community members as to the importance of storm water management … [and] will also provide a venue for further research on advanced storm water management practices.”
Zachary Harvey ’14, the team leader for the project, explained that the group has been working with Campus Grounds Staff to find a place on campus for these gardens, specifically considering locations “that will have impact, but will also be in line with the master plan.” They are considering the east side of the new PEC, but all planning is still in preliminary stages.
The group also includes Galen Cobb ’14 and Ben Glor ’15. They are being advised by chemistry professor Dr. Paul Edmiston officially, and psychology and environmental studies professor Dr. Susan Clayton secondarily.
The grant is part of the United States EPA Campus RainWorks Challenge, a project marketed to both undergraduate and graduate level students. Teams are invited to submit a proposal for a site on their campus showing how managing storm water at its source can benefit the campus community and the environment. Winning teams will receive a monetary prize. Their faculty advisors will also receive funds to conduct research on green infrastructure. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 14. and winners will not be announced until April 22, meaning their plans here on campus would probably not be implemented until next fall. First place prizes amount to $2,500 for the student prize and $11,000 for Green Infrastructure Research, and second place prizes are $1,500 for the Student Team and $8,000 for the Green Infrastructure Research.