Stormwater Management in the Community

 

Water gardens cleans polluted stormwater before it reaches the watershed.

Members of the First Herring Brook Watershed Initiative (FHBWI), which consists mostly of Scituate, Mass. residents with a variety of environmental backgrounds and interests, are collaborating with the Massachusetts Riverways “Adopt-A-Stream” program?EUR??,,????'??+part of the Department of Fish and Game?EUR??,,????'??+to work with neighborhoods to create natural filtering storm water systems to prevent pollution from entering streams and brooks.

Sally Coyle, a local landscape architect, is also working with community and holding workshops to show people how to create eco-friendly solutions in their own backyards.

FHBWI and Riverways members recently got out their shovels to create an buffer zone of vegetation, aka rain garden, a collection of about 35-40 absorbent plants around the road’s catch basins that allow polluted water to percolate and be purified by the plant matter before it flows into the watershed. All plants were delivered to the site by Greenbush company Northern Oak Landscape. Riverways is funding one rain garden and other rain gardens will be paid for by a $175,000 grant from the EPA.