After the Rain Tour: The Impact of Rain and New Stormwater Solutions

On Sunday, October 4th, TTF and Fairmount Park were joined by a group of dedicated citizens looking to learn about Best Management Practices for Stormwater Solutions.

After a fun, interactive activity demonstrating how a watershed works, we all set off for a tour of local stormwater management projects.

Stop 1 was the Awbury Arboretum’s bioswale near the only daylighted portion of the Wingohocking Creek. The bioswale is a set of large troughs dug in the soil parallel to Washington Lane that is lined with deep-rooted, water loving plants. Dirty street runoff flows through specially designed stormdrains into these troughs, where it is absorbed and filtered by the plants and soil.

Next, we moved onto Cliveden Park. The park’s stormwater demonstration project is a bioswale/rain garden. Water moves through these stepped troughs with the dual purposes of preventing flooding in the valley below and cleansing the dirty street runoff. (See the picture below.)

The famous Ross Street was our next stop, where we discussed the plans for the new green street and brainstormed ways to expand this project and create more model neighborhoods and model neighbors throughout the city.

The next stop was at the Waterview Recreation Center, home to one of the few large porous pavement projects in the city. While we were there we watched water flow through the porous concrete sidewalk and disappeared into the infiltration pits beds below. We also checked out their flow-through planters and street tree trenches. (See the picture below.)

For our last stop we were back to Awbury Arboretum, where we modeled our lovely rain barrel and discussed various benefits and  glitches you could encounter with your very own rain barrel.

The tour was a smashing success (complete with homemade apple butter and apple cider from Fairmount Park) and we are grateful to all that were in attendance!

For more information about this event, contact Ashley at ashley@ttfwatershed.org