Rain Gardens: A Blooming Good Idea!

NW AR Rain Garden Projects Receive $350,000 

David Casaletto, Executive Director, Ozarks Water Watch

I am VERY excited about the rain garden 319 grant that has been awarded to the Beaver Water District and the Illinois River Watershed Partnership. This grant was the subject of an article in "The Source", the quarterly publication of Beaver Water District. They have allowed me to share that article with you below. I would also like to wish everyone a Happy Halloween as this week's newsletter happens to fall on this event. Don't eat too much candy!

Rain Garden at Butterfield Trail

On July 1, the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission (ANRC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded two grants totaling $350,000 to build rain gardens to improve water quality.  Beaver Water District was awarded $139,000 and the Illinois River Watershed Partnership (IRWP) will receive $211,000 to build rain gardens in Northwest Arkansas over the next three years. Rain gardens will be located in the Illinois River Watershed and the West Fork-White River / Beaver Lake-White River Watershed.

Rain Garden at Murphy Park

"We're very excited about this opportunity to optimize resources and build rain gardens in Northwest Arkansas," said Dr. Robert Morgan, Manager of Environmental Quality for Beaver Water District. "We titled our grant proposal 'Rain Gardens for Beaver Lake: A Blooming Good Idea,' and that's not just a title. It means something. Rain gardens help keep rain where it falls so that nature has a chance to filter pollutants from storm runoff that is headed to Beaver Lake, our drinking water source. The cleaner that water is when it reaches the lake, the less money it costs for the District to clean the water for drinking."

Rain Garden at Shaw Elementary

As for IRWP, the rain gardens located in the Illinois River Watershed will improve water quality by filtering rainwater runoff into creeks and streams that flow into the Illinois River. "The goal of the Partnership is to reduce nutrient and sediment load into the Illinois River Watershed and to educate the public on how we can improve water quality," said Dr. Delia Haak, Executive Director of IRWP. "When we do that, we enhance the aquatic life in the river, as well as improve habitat."

Some great helpers at this rain garden!

Some stream reaches in both of these watersheds are listed as impaired on what's known as the 303(d) list of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ). Projects such as this are designed to slow "non-point source" (NPS) urban and rural runoff and improve water quality in streams. While the two grants were awarded separately, both entities must provide local match. The projects will share a part-time Rain Garden Resource Specialist. The Rain Garden Resource Specialist will work with a cooperative project steering committee on selection of sites for rain gardens, conduct six Rain Garden Academies to train volunteers, and help install rain gardens with the assistance of volunteers. Over the course of three years, the two grant projects will:

• train 300 people in rain garden design and installation,
• implement 60 demonstration rain gardens in public/quasi-public locations in the two watersheds, and
• institutionalize rain gardens as a best management practice in Arkansas.

Dr. Morgan said the two organizations will be able to measure the success of the rain gardens through a monitoring program that will include water quality analysis, photo-monitoring both before and after each rain garden is built and annual site visits conducted by the Rain Garden Resource Specialist.

More Rain Gardens

For more information about the rain garden project, call 479-238-4671. Beaver Water District supplies drinking water to more than 300,000 people and industries in Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, Bentonville and surrounding areas. The District's mission is to serve customers' needs by providing high quality drinking water that meets or exceeds all regulatory requirements and is economically priced consistent with our quality standards. Visit www.bwdh2o.org. The Illinois River Watershed Partnership is a diverse group of men and women who work to improve the water quality of the Illinois River. Visit www.irwp.org.

Quote of the Week

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Current News Articles

The 7 billionth person on Earth will draw his or her first breath on Oct. 31, at least according to estimates by the United Nations. Assuming all systems are in working order, that baby will also create its first output that same day, in the form - to put it delicately - of a dirty diaper. That dirty diaper is only the tip of an iceberg of human manure produced around the globe every day. It might seem a reasonable question to ask how humanity will deal with this output of feces as the world's population creeps toward 10 billion by 2100. But that question presumes we have the poop problem under control now. Here's the bad news: We don't.

Approximately 2.6 billion people around the world lack any sanitation whatsoever. More than 200 million tons of human waste goes untreated every year. In the developing world, 90 percent of sewage is discharged directly into lakes, rivers and oceans. And even in developed countries, cities depend on old, rickety sewage systems that are easily overwhelmed by a heavy rain.

All this untreated sewage adds up to a major public health crisis that kills an estimated 1.4 million children each year, according to the World Health Organization. That's one child every 20 seconds, or more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Despite this massive death toll, sanitation hasn't gotten the same attention as other world development goals. The United Nations, which set a goal to halve the number of people without basic sanitation by 2015, now calls that target "out of reach."

A Roman-era public restroom in Ephesus, Turkey.

"Sanitation is not a sexy issue," said Dan Yeo, a senior policy analyst at WaterAid, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to hygiene, water and sanitation issues. "It's about s---, and that's not particularly attractive. It's a taboo to talk about in a lot of contexts." (much more - very interesting article)

FAYETTEVILLE - Consultants are beginning to write a new guidebook for managing stormwater in Fayetteville. Called the drainage criteria manual, the guide will identify "low-impact" techniques to help contractors meet city requirements for flood control and water quality. Private engineers, who will largely be the ones implementing a revised manual, had the opportunity Monday to share their thoughts on upcoming changes. Chris Brown, city engineer, said the last manual, written about 15 years ago, needed to be updated to address technological changes in monitoring stormwater runoff. Revisions also are coming amid potentially stricter Environmental Protection Agency standards for the city's stormwater system permit, which is up for renewal in 2014.

Fayetteville code requires developers to show a project will not increase stormwater flow off a property before they begin construction. The accompanying drainage criteria manual gives engineers technical guidance on ways they can make that happen. Similar manuals city officials are using to draft their guide contain both mechanical and biological solutions to managing stormwater. Detention and retention ponds capture rainwater in large basins in an attempt to slow its discharge into area waterways. Biological concepts such as rain gardens, bioswales and riparian buffers are aimed at allowing stormwater to soak into the ground so harmful pollutants are not carried downstream.

Engineers who came to Monday's meeting told city officials they wanted a simple and flexible system. "For us, the simpler the better," said Brian Teague with Community By Design. "It's least expensive, and it's more likely to get implemented." Teague said it's often difficult to make low-impact development techniques fit with the city's long-range goal for discouraging suburban sprawl because space is so limited in already developed areas. The city should give developers incentives - such as allowing them to locate rain gardens in the public right-of-way - to encourage low-impact development, Teague said. Blake Jorgensen, with Jorgensen and Associates, said the manual must be clear. If certain soil types are used to allow quick absorption of stormwater, the breakdown of soil types need to be properly defined to avoid any confusion, he said.

Jorgensen also suggested developers, when unable to adhere to city standards, should be able to pay into an escrow fund, which the city could use to pay for regional detention ponds. Most importantly, he said, the city needs to be consistent in interpreting its regulations. Jorgensen said it doesn't do much good to install a rain garden, when more intrusive building techniques are being used nearby by other developers - or even municipalities themselves. "You're almost putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg," he said. Brown emphasized city officials are working to find innovative ways to manage stormwater. But, he added, pipe-and-pond solutions will always be a part of their approach, because they can be better at dealing with flooding than low-impact techniques. Consultants with FTN Associates, AMEC Earth & Environmental Inc. and EB LandWorks Inc. are expected to draft the low-impact section of the drainage criteria manual by the end of the year. A final draft of the entire manual will not be ready until next summer. The consultants are being paid through a portion of the $200,000 city officials have allocated each year since 2006 for reducing nutrients in local waterways and the city's $50,000 match for a $500,000 sustainability grant it received last year from the Home Depot Foundation.

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Stream Focus Of EPA Mandate 

TOWN BRANCH ON IMPAIRED LIST  

By Misty Gittings

Posted: October 25, 2011 at 5:33 a.m. 

BENTONVILLE - Mayor Bob McCaslin received a letter from the Environmental Protection Agency in July 2010 stating the agency planned to lower the amount of phosphorus allowed in water discharged from the city's A Street wastewater treatment plant. The city has engaged scientists, legal counsel and congressmen to forge a way forward that won't cost ratepayers millions of dollars since then. The EPA has recommended a phosphorous limit of 0.1 milligrams per liter starting in 2014 at the earliest, according to a letter from EPA Region 6 administrator Al Armendariz. The A Street plant is permitted now at 1.0 milligrams per liter and releases an effluent flow with about 0.5 milligrams of phosphorus, said Mike Roberts, plant director.

Retrofitting the A Street plant with technology to reduce phosphorus levels to 0.1 would cost millions of dollars, McCaslin said. These costs would be passed on to ratepayers, rather than repaid through taxes. The situation at the A Street plant is different from the EPA mandate facing other cities in the region and the Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority. The EPA is imposing a mandate of 0.1 milligrams of phosphorus on wastewater treatment plants that release into a tributary of the Illinois River. This mandate affects every wastewater plant in the area except the A Street plant. The A Street plant flows into Town Branch Creek, which goes underground about 400 yards from McKisic Creek, according to a 1997 study by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. There is some debate over where the stream goes from that point. The stream re-emerges about 300 yards downstream and flows into McKisic Creek, according to the ADEQ report. But city officials are not quite so sure.

Mike Bender, public works director, said no one is certain where the water goes after it flows underground, though he acknowledged the general assumption is that it re-emerges and merges into the McKisic. Ben Peters, city engineer, said he recalled a study from the 1980s using dye tests that proved inconclusive. Tom Aley with Ozark Underground Laboratory, which specializes in groundwater tracing, said it's not uncommon for streams in the Ozarks to go underground in one spot and re-emerge in a completely different basin. The phosphorus mandate comes from a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club against the EPA that requires the agency to address bodies of water in Arkansas that are classified as impaired streams. Town Branch is designated an impaired stream by the EPA because of high concentrations of total phosphorus, according to a 2010 study by the EPA.

The ADEQ took Town Branch off its impaired list in 2006 and submitted data to the EPA urging it to do the same in 2010. The EPA declined, stating "the information was insufficient to exclude Town Branch" from the impaired stream list, according to a 2010 EPA study. The removal of Town Branch from ADEQ's impaired stream list was at least partially the result of dramatic decreases in the amount of phosphorus released from the A Street wastewater plant in the last decade. The treatment plant added anaerobic microbes in 2005 to promote biological phosphorus removal, along with liquid alum to cause phosphorus to settle out in the final clarifiers. Prior to 2005, the average release of phosphorus from the plant was 5.9 milligrams. But from 2007 to 2009, the average dropped to 0.1 to 0.7 milligrams.

"The EPA commends the City of Bentonville for this significant reduction in effluent phosphorus concentration," according to a 2010 Total Maximum Daily Load study by the EPA. "We're concerned about the environment and making sure that we don't do anything irresponsible," McCaslin said. "But we've (the region) spent $300 million in 10 to 12 years, and now we're being treated as though we're some major violator of the law." The EPA does not conduct its own stream research and bases its decisions from state data, according to an email from Cecillea Pond-Mayo with ADEQ. That lack of data by the EPA is bothersome to McCaslin. He questions where the science is to support claims by the EPA that the stream is still impaired and that the wastewater treatment plant is somehow to blame.

The city has contracted with a company to supply science and a lawyer in case that data isn't enough. McCaslin cautions that legal action is not his first choice, but he won't rule it out if the city and the EPA can't come to an agreement. "We have postured ourselves with the EPA in a way that it is highly likely we are going to work out a solution. But if a worst-case scenario develops, the citizens of Bentonville would be well served by pursuing a legal action," McCaslin said.

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Blunt steps up drive to keep EPA off the farm