Start Thinking About Your Own Rain Garden
Sure, it’s 20 degrees in Chicago and from this vantage, spring is a mere fleck on the map, but what better time could there be to start dreaming about your future outdoor activities?! CNT has some new tools to assist with your green thumb fantasies!
At the December 5 meeting of the Illinois River Coordinating Council, CNT Senior Engineer Bill Eyring presented Lieutenant Governor Patrick Quinn with the ceremonial first edition of our new pocket guide to green stormwater solutions.
(photo above is Illinois Lt. Governor Pat Quinn with CNT’s Steve Wise, Bill Eyring and Julia Kennedy)
The booklet, Water: From Trouble to Treasure, is a field guide to understanding and advancing green stormwater management, a critical component of a sustainable future. The guide gives community groups, homeowners, and others practical ways to capture raindrops where they fall that are simple, affordable and can replace more costly conventional stormwater approaches.
The guide lays out a vision of restoring the natural ability of landscapes to manage stormwater. It offers immediate steps for groups to get started without extensive funding, expertise, or fear of adverse consequences. Green solutions manage stormwater through simple approaches that restore or mimic natural systems. These include rain gardens, native vegetation, tree planting, rain barrels, and permeable pavement. Green infrastructure can save homeowners, developers and municipalities money while protecting water quality, recharging ground water supplies and creating more enjoyable landscapes in the process.
Water: From Trouble to Treasure presents case studies of successful and easy solutions that were undertaken without significant costs. Examples highlighted include a rain garden at the Brookfield Zoo, a native prairie at Cumberland Elementary School, and a community project in Bangs Lake. Additionally, the guide includes resources-online, material, and organizational-that can assist with project implementation.
The guide encourages the documentation of every new green solution that is constructed so that the public and water resource planners can stay up-to-date on the region’s real water infrastructure capacity. Project leaders can share their solutions and lessons learned through a future registration link at the Green Values Stormwater Toolbox website: http://greenvalues.cnt.org.
Free copies of the 5.5″ x 4.25″ guide can be obtained by contacting CNT Natural Resources Engineer Julia Kennedy at 773-278-4004 or are available for downloading here.
