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Rain garden soaks up water
landscape design adds aesthetic appeal to demolition site
CAMPBELL
A demonstration rain garden illustrates the long-term aesthetic and functional uses that demolition sites can serve.
The Mahoning County Land Bank completed its first rain garden here in December. It replaces a dilapidated house demolished in 2015 at 681 Coitsville Road.
Located in the Mahoning River watershed, the rain garden consists of water-absorbent trees, shrubs and ornamental grasses and 31 tons of river rocks, with about 21/2 feet of fine, water-absorbent soil beneath the 6- to 10-inch layer of rocks.
The spongy surface detains storm water for up to seven days as it releases gradually into the ground.
The goal is to limit the rate and amount of water flowing downhill, thereby limiting soil erosion and flooding, said Maciek Adamczak, the land bank’s landscape contractor. He is the owner of Adamczak LLC of Boardman.
the cost
The $17,000 garden, paid for by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, which administers land bank demolition funds, also reduces the amount of water going into the storm sewer by detaining water in a pool over the rocks after significant rainfalls.
“He had to do excavation here. He had to do things with the slope of the land, so the water would run through, and he had to do things that would make it look beautiful,” said Debora Flora, land bank executive director, explaining the cost of the project.
“As I was working, the neighbors started to come out and work and do different things to enhance the beauty of their neighborhood,” including their own landscaping, Adamczak said. “I’ve had a lot of neighbors that come up and really thank us for doing this,” he added.
“They had to deal with the eyesore for a very long time,” he said, referring to the vacant, abandoned house that was demolished before the garden was installed.
STORMWATER MANAGEMENT
“This isn’t going to fix all of the stormwater management issues in the county, but it’s a nice demonstration of what can be, and it’s tying vacant land to how we might address stormwater management going forward,” Flora said.
“Definitely, we would do this again, because, anywhere that we’re taking out a house and removing the vegetation, I have a concern that there might be an unintended water issue that results from that work,” she added.
Rain gardens divert water away from sewer systems, Adamczak said. “It also filters the water back into the aquifer” of underground water, he said of his installation, which he called “a great greening project.”
However, if rainfall exceeds about one inch in 24 hours, water will overflow from the Coitsville Road rain garden into the sewer, Adamczak said.
The garden’s effectiveness in absorbing and detaining water was illustrated by the presence of a slowly-draining five-to-six-inch deep pool of water over the rocks the morning after a three-quarter-inch rain.
At its peak 24 hours earlier, the pool resulting from that rain was 10-12 inches deep, Adamczak estimated.
the visibility
Motorists frequently slow down and even stop along Coitsville Road to admire the rain garden, whose pine and maple trees are adorned with Christmas decorations placed by unknown people other than the landscaper.
“That, to me, is a testimony to community pride and an endorsement of our work,” Flora said, adding that the land bank will perform garden maintenance.
“They’re treating it kind of like a neighborhood park,” Adamczak said. “It brings a great sense of pride back to the community here,” he said of the garden, which took almost two months to complete.
“We want people to notice it, and I think they are noticing it, certainly here in Campbell, and talking about it,” Flora said.
“It’s beauty, but it’s also practicality,” she said. “The practicality side isn’t as well-known right now,” she added.
The land bank’s mission is to return vacant, tax-delinquent land to productive use.
sewer issues
Any overflow from the Coitsville Road rain garden goes into a storm sewer and eventually ends up in the Mahoning River, said William Coleman, office manager for the Mahoning County Sanitary Engineer’s office.
By reducing the storm water entering that sewer, the rain garden can reduce flooding, he said.
Campbell has separate storm and sanitary sewer systems.
Youngstown, however, has combined storm and sanitary sewers.
Green infrastructure, including rain gardens, permeable pavements, constructed wetlands, greenway trails and bioretention swales, is addressed in Youngstown’s long term control plan for its combined storm and sanitary sewer overflows.
Those overflows discharge a mixture of stormwater and sewage into local waterways after heavy rains, and they were the primary cause of a massive Lake Newport fish kill last summer that resulted in July’s closure of Mill Creek Park lakes to all recreational uses for the remainder of 2015.
“Use of green infrastructure projects may reduce the long-term cost of Youngstown’s CSO (curtailment) program, while embracing the use of sustainable and environmentally friendly practices,” according to the city’s plan for its $147 million program, which is scheduled for completion in 2033.
The cleveland perspective
Green infrastructure to reduce stormwater entry into combined sewers constitutes about $65 million of the $3 billion long-term CSO control plan in the Cleveland area’s Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, which is designed to protect Lake Erie water quality.
“It’s not the panacea I think everyone thinks it is. It’s an alternative, like a (sewer) tunnel or a storage tank or (storm and sanitary) sewer separation, ” said Frank Greenland, NEORSD’s watershed protection director.
“You study hard to look for the opportunities; and where it fits, you use the technology” of green infrastructure, he added.
“That rain garden is only going to help you for that small storm, that one-inch rainfall, that maybe one and a half inch rainfall. And when you get a two-inch rainfall, that rain garden is not going to be able to handle it,” said Kellie Rotunno, NEOSRD’s chief operating officer.
“They need to be maintained. You need to make sure the invasive species don’t take over the native plants,” in the rain garden, she said, adding that someone must remove any litter that accumulates in it.
“They can get clogged (with sand and debris) just like catch basins can,” she said of the gardens.