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A Rainy Day Story
Our modern world is one of impermeability. Highways, parking lots, and shopping malls dot the landscape. Think of the footprint of your house following a heavy rain. Water skitters across the impervious surfaces—areas covered by impenetrable materials that thwart water absorption. Water looks for a way back into the ground, but instead is diverted across driveways and playgrounds, picking up pollutants as it goes. Flooding increases sedimentation and erosion in streams and rivers and destroys critical habitat, leading to degradation of water quality, but how do we fix it? The Junior League of Lancaster has a plan, and it involves building rain gardens and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).
Why Rain Gardens and STEM?
Why is the Junior League of Lancaster interested in building rain gardens? Consider this: for every 100 women graduating from college, only 12 of them will have a STEM degree, yet STEM occupations grew in the last decade at a rate of approximately 24 to four. The design and build of rain gardens requires many STEM elements such as botany; chemistry for soil composition; mathematic calculations for determining runoff amounts and infiltration rates; and more, making it the perfect teaching tool. By focusing on STEM as a way to empower young women—and by working with community partners such as the North Museum of Nature and Science, the Lancaster County Conservancy, Franklin & Marshall College, the City of Lancaster, and LandStudies—the Junior League is helping girls to make inroads to the future. “If we continue to match organizations in our community that otherwise have no commonalities, we not only tackle our storm water problem as a community, but we can bridge common goals across the community to achieve big solutions,“ says Sarah Ganse, president of the Junior League of Lancaster.
Research shows that the more impermeable the landscape, the less healthy the receiving waters will be. Before asphalt and concrete, we had open fields and wetlands. Rain gardens assist in restoring balance to the water cycle by mimicking wetlands. Redirecting stormwater into a rain garden and allowing it to temporarily pond while it slowly seeps back into the ground (known as residence time) can help control flooding. When it rains, pollutants like fertilizers, pesticides, pet waste, oil, grease, heavy metals, and trash enter streams and rivers via storm water runoff. Rain gardens filter out these harmful contaminants by capturing them in their soils and holding them hostage so they can’t even reach the stream.
The rain garden project has become a staple of the Junior League’s STEM committee, providing opportunities for partnerships with schools and organizations, and generating curiosity and thought-provoking discussion. Through it, the JLL hopes to construct rain gardens all over Lancaster County while promoting STEM. To date, the JLL has spearheaded construction of two gardens in downtown Lancaster, or the North Museum and the Stone Independent School, with two more gardens targeted for the spring at Manheim Township High School and Pineapple Manor in Millersville.
Raining Benefits
The benefits don’t stop there. Fishing, forestry, and recreational tourist activities get an economic boom from clean water. For every $1 spent on source water protection, the City of Lancaster saves $27. Even a small rain garden diverts thousands of gallons of water per year away from the storm system and back into the ground where it belongs. Equally important is the social benefit to a community that comes together to create and care for a rain garden. So many benefits from one little garden!
Get Help Here
Interested in starting a rain garden? There are many websites to guide you, such as the PennStateExtension, the City of Lancaster’s SaveIt! Program, or the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, but for hands-on help, contact the JLL. The Junior League will walk you through all the stages, from soil testing to siting, sizing, and planting—and even help you use the Pythagorean theorem to measure stormwater runoff from your roof! And you thought you’d never use that again in life. Contact girlsinstem@jllancaster.orgfor more information.
How to Create a Rain Garden
Rain gardens can be any size, but they need a deeper middle surrounded by an elevated perimeter.
Native species are planted based on zones created from elevation changes. Hydrophytes (plants that only grow in water) are planted in the deeper area to handle periods of pooling water, while facultative plants (those that can grow in water or uplands) thrive along the higher edges. Common native hydrophytes include Soft Rush and Golden Ragwort, while facultative plants include Golden Aster or Fragrant Sumac.
When planted with a good mix of native plants, rain gardens become sponges, absorbing nutrients, trapping sediments, purifying the water, and assisting ingroundwater recharge.
“In addition to being a valuable water filtration tool, the native plants provide a habitat for butterflies, bees, and birds, which means less need for insecticides,” says Elizabeth Martin Payne, chair of the Junior League’s Girls in STEM committee.
Pam Lazos is an environmental lawyer; author of the eco thriller Oil and Water and of Six Sisters, a collection of novellas; and assistant chair of the Junior League of Lancaster STEM committee.
