Caldwell County rain garden sets new expectations level |
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s stormwater Phase II dealing with water quality in smaller communities affects all metropolitan areas with more than 50,000 people. Lenoir, Morganton and Hickory now qualify under Phase II regulations. Allen Caldwell, forward-looking Cooperative Extension director for Caldwell County and Seth Nagy, Extension’s agriculture agent for the county, designed and constructed their county’s first rain garden.
“We hope that this rain garden will set an example for the community to follow,” said Caldwell. “Many people don’t realize that water is a limited resource, and we need to take care of what we have.” The rain garden treats runoff from the public library and County Extension Center office roofs and surrounding parking lots. Since bio-retention areas should be between five and seven percent of the total treatment area, Caldwell and Nagy needed a 520-square-foot area to treat 8,400 square-feet of impervious pavement. “After observing the area and tracking average rainfall,” said Nagy, “we decided a rain garden would be the best choice because of its flexibility in design and plant selection.” The main pollutants the rain garden controls are gasoline and oil, combined with excess loose sediment and gravel. The runoff leaves the parking lot through a pipe and enters the rain garden, where excess sediment settles and mulch absorbs gasoline and oil. Caldwell and Nagy also focused more on diverse plant selection than traditional rain garden owners usually do. After receiving advice from colleague, Bill Hunt of NC State University’s Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department, they went to a local nursery to select plants with similar characteristics to “normal” rain garden plants, but that had never been tried, creating a research-based and cutting-edge rain garden. Several groups have already toured the rain garden with more scheduled. Hopefully, said Caldwell, as more residents become aware of how important purifying stormwater is and how manageable rain gardens are, they will embrace best management practices. -- Kathleen Powers |
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