Rain Garden
This project involves building a rain garden either on Purdue's campus or in the local community. It involves multiple steps such as choosing a site, analyzing and taking inventory of the site, actual design, and construction.
The rain garden project is a green project that’s focused on the environment. Rain gardens fall under Low Impact Development (LID) and Best Management Practice (BMP) umbrella. Both filter runoff pollution, thereby improving water quality. Rain gardens can cut down on the amount of pollution reaching creeks and streams by up to 30%. They act as groundwater recharge zones by allowing storm water to soak into the ground as opposed to flowing into storm drains and surface waters. They also provide a way to use and optimize any rain that falls, reducing or avoiding the need for irrigation. Thus, they don’t require as much water from human sources such as grassy lawns or traditional landscaped areas. This project will help make Purdue more sustainable in terms of water use and more aesthetically pleasing.
We're currently planning on meeting with Lindsey Payne, a doctoral student here at Purdue, and Sara Peele, a Wabash River Enhancement Corporation staff member, early Spring 2015 to discuss green practices, talk through siting locations, and how we can help WREC identify and approach potential partners. WREC has been exploring possible locations in the community, but they don't have any concrete locations yet. Currently, they are focused on the Elliot Ditch watershed, which is southeast of campus. Since they only have a few possibilities at this point, our group suggested that we could help identify and approach potential partners so we are currently seeking out options for the rain garden location as well. We want to have a site picked out by early Spring 2015.