PLANTING A RAIN GARDEN
Borough, water authority and volunteers create filtering project for stormwater
LANSDALE - By the end of next week, Lansdale’s newest park attraction will be ready to handle anything Mother Nature can throw at it.
Borough officials broke ground Friday morning on a rain garden at Whites Road Park, the result of collaboration between several local agencies and more than a few online votes from local residents.
“Thanks to the community. We would not be here without them today. There was a poll on Facebook, and we slaughtered Franconia Township to win this, so we’re very happy with our community for their support,” said Parks and Recreation Director Karl Lukens.
Back in May Lansdale finished ahead of Franconia in an online contest sponsored by the North Penn Water Au
“The old expression is, ‘We all live downstream,’ and it’s true. Somebody lives downstream from here, and we right here are downstream from someplace else.” — Tony Bellitto, executive director, North Penn Water Authority
thority and the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy, granting the winner $5,000 toward a rain garden. The result of that contest started to take shape Friday morning, as officials from all three groups credited their close cooperation with each other.
“Source water protection is a very important part of what we do. Stormwater runoff is a huge issue, in the wastewater and environmental protection business,” said water authority Executive Director Tony Bellitto.
“Something like this, to control stormwater, to filter out sediment and pollutants, which could eventually work its way into our waterways, is something we’re all becoming much more conscious of. It’s very good to see,” he said.
On Friday, there to see was a large pit, roughly 26 feet long by 15 feet wide by about five feet deep, dug out in front of a brick pumping station just east of the main entrance to Whites Road Park. As the officials posed with shovels, about a dozen volunteers from Merck worked to snap and hammer together plastic frames known as Flo-Tanks, which resembled larger versions of school drink cartons and which will form a key part of the rain garden.
“Typically, these ‘aqua blocks’ are introduced mostly in an urban setting, because they’re really important when there’s not a lot of land space,” said Ryan Beltz, executive director of the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy.
In Lansdale’s case, a total of 81 of the plastic blocks will be built, then fit together within the pit, and wrapped with special plastic meant to filter out pollutants while roughly doubling the capacity of water the area can absorb.
“It gives more time for that water to kind of percolate into the soil, rather than just run straight off into the creeks and streams,” Beltz said.
“There’s a rock garden that lines (the garden), and that will kind of dissipate the majority of the sediment, and then it hits the rain garden, and percolates through the soil. Any toxins or other pollutants will settle into the rain garden, and that’s what the fabric is for: to prevent the aqua blocks from filling up,” he said.
Building those blocks and locating them within the pit was expected to take much of Friday, Beltz said, while several dozen volunteers were organized by the PWC to help plant the garden on Saturday. Going in will be native plants grown by that group in a greenhouse, which are meant to attract birds, butterflies and other wildlife while filtering pollutants.
Once fully completed, likely on or around Oct. 1920 depending on weather, the rain garden is estimated to capture roughly 1,200 pounds of sediment per year, which Beltz and Lukens said should help the borough meet its federally- and state-mandated requirements for stormwater runoff and pollution reduction.
“The old expression is, ‘We all live downstream,’ and it’s true. Somebody lives downstream from here, and we right here are downstream from someplace else,” Bellitto said.
Lukens said he hopes the rain garden will draw visitors during next year’s summer concert series at the park, and Fuller said she thought the garden is “such a culmination of a lot of what Lansdale is about.”
“It highlights the partnerships that we’re fortunate to have in Lansdale: the synergy between the conservancy, the water authority, council, administration, partners like Merck, and our community, who get behind the green initiatives that Lansdale is trying to put forth,” she said.
Each thanked borough staff from the Parks and Recreation, public works, code and sewer authority departments, in addition to engineering firm Aegis Engineering and Planning which designed the garden. Anyone interested in volunteering for similar projects can sign up at www.perkiomenwatershed.org/volunteer.
“It’s a great community project, and it’s nice to see all these different entities, and all these different agencies, working together to put this rain garden in,” Beltz said.