By Kate Heiber-Cobb

Water and Lake Monona are part of what makes the community of Monona such a lovely place to live. As we all know, they also cause us many challenges and headaches. Many of us have dealt with flooded basements, garages and yards. I am going to talk about some sustainable ideas for us to deal with water.

When neighborhoods were developed years ago, and also for the most part, now, they were and are developed to take rainwater away from the properties into a big storm water system. Unfortunately, we have built so much impervious surface with roads, parking lots, sidewalks, driveways, patios, etc. that we have massive quantities of rainwater entering a system which cannot handle it. Also, the water collects unwanted contaminants (hydrocarbons and bacteria) as it flows through and down into that system, and eventually into our lakes, streams and groundwater.

A permaculture concept is “hold the water where it falls.” A sustainable landscape concept is to “deal with the water as near the source point as possible.” There are many ways to do this on a large scale and on a small scale.

On a small, personal scale we can address the health of the soil and our landscape to address our water issues. Healthy soil holds water. What does that mean exactly? Soil which is alive with microorganisms, fungi and bacteria drinks and absorbs water. Unhealthy, compacted soil does not.

Some of the ways we create living, healthy soil is by not using synthetic, petroleum chemicals on our yards and gardens. Not only are they a major contaminant and pollutant; they also kill important microorganisms, bacteria and fungi that are crucial for soil health. Try to decrease your turf area. Turf has shallow roots that tend to compact the soil, creating a carpet-type runoff of rainwater. If you plant more trees, shrubs, natives, perennials and annual plants in your yard, they will create more biodiversity for our ecosystem and also provide deeper root systems that can better absorb our rainwater.

On a large scale, we can focus on curb cuts, planted medians, rain gardens, sloping to landscaping rather than to roads and storm drains. We can encourage our policy makers to create guidance and regulations for developers to use sustainable water design.

We can also reduce our hardscape. On the large scale, “There are about 60-200 million spaces along our U.S. city streets where trees could be planted. This translates to the potential to absorb 33 million more tons of CO2 every year, and saving $4 billion in energy costs (from reduced mechanical cooling and flood control infrastructure). Food-producing trees and shrubs can enhance local food security at the same time. Vines can be planted where space is limited.”

On the small scale we can hold the water where it falls by using rain barrels, rain gardens, swales and berms, infiltration basins, vegetation, terraces and reducing our own hardscape.

The Monona Community Gardens, St. Stephens Community Garden and The Madison Area Permaculture Guild created a wonderful model in sustainable water use at the Community Garden at St. Stephens Church right here in Monona. If you haven’t checked it out, please do.

We expanded on a wonderful Eagle Scout Project that took the church parking lot storm water runoff, sent it down a trenched, bouldered ditch, and then directed it into our municipal storm water system down at Owen Road. The Madison Area Permaculture Guild and the Community Gardens built a three-tiered, terraced rain garden and a series of permeable dams and directed the water into a large swale and berm system. The rain garden filters out sediments, and slows and cleans the water. The swale then takes it (with any overflow going down the Eagle Scout trenched dry boulder creek) 150 feet on-contour of the land holding it and allowing the land to drink the water. The berm is planted with grass, clover and many trees, shrubs and perennials. This system takes many thousands of gallons of storm water runoff from the parking lot and holds it in the ground on the hillside. It slowly percolates down underground to where the community garden plots are right below the berm, also on contour. The system filters sediment, cleans water, holds water on the land and keeps most of it out of our city storm water system.

Can you imagine the changes that could occur, the money that could be saved, and the water problems solved if many Monona residents chose to set up systems that keep the water out of our municipal storm water system ?

Let’s challenge ourselves to create new, sustainable ways of dealing with rain water and storm water runoff in Monona. We can all help to solve this problem of excess water!

The Natural Step Monona Project Team is working on a 2010 project to create Rain Gardens at every Monona Church next spring and summer! Contact TNS Monona if you are interested in participating. As always, projects come with hands-on educational opportunites and wonderful informational handouts!

Contact us if you are interested at www.tnsmonona.org/contact-us/.

Sources: Sustainable Landscape Construction, Thompson/Sorvig; Constructed Wetland in the Sustainable Landscape, Campbell/Ogden; Rainwater Harvesting Volume 2, Brad Lancaster.