Rain Garden Planted at St Thomas Roasters
Saturday, August 29, 2009

For more about this project, see our Fall 2009 newsletter .

Excessive stormwater runoff is an immense problem for urban and suburban areas that can lead to eroded lands, sediment-filled lakes, wildlife habitat losses, wildlife deaths, depleted aquifers and dried up wells during droughts, degraded water quality, diminished watershed uses. and the immense damage with other effects of floods.   Vegetative infiltration Best Management Practices (BMPs) such as rain gardens can help reverse these runoff miseries, and achieve additional benefits such as landscape beautification, mental solace, nature education, higher property values, and water quality improvement for the TMDL (water pollutant removals) needed for Paxton Creek.

The rain garden at the St. Thomas Roasters is one of over two dozen BMP sites in the Paxton Creek watershed municipalities. These sites, their photographs, characteristics, benefits, and locations are parts of the Paxton Creek BMP tours .The St Thomas Roasters project will be included in the website tours. This new rain garden will have a signboard explaining what was done, who was involved, and how the garden works. PCWEA with partners sponsor and install 2- 4 BMPs each year for community enhancement.

PCWEA Celebrates World Water Day On March 22 at the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts

PCWEA joined other environmental organizations – Blue Mountain Outfitters, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Lower Susquehanna  Riverkeeper, and The Nature Conservancy -- to celebrate global clean water, and a new IMAX film at the Whitaker Center of Science and the Arts at 222 Market Street in Harrisburg on March 22. PCWEA displayed information on local watershed activities, and offered a watershed pollution game called ÒWetland Metaphors.Ó Other activities at the event included making fish prints, demonstrating erosion at a water table, and posing for a photo with whitewater kayaking gear, and more. The film, entitled Grand Canyon Adventure: River of Risk , shows the plight of the Colorado River during the continuing drought in the American Southwest, illustrating the pressing need for local and national water conservation.  PCWEA viewed the film a week ago as a preview for exhibitors and the media. This is a 3D-film (yes, the audience wore funny, polarized glasses, causing people to want to dodge water slashes as images seemed to pop out of a huge projection screen). Narrated by Robert Redford, the film depicts a team of modern adventurers floating down the dangerous, exhilarating river while they seek insights into the causes and remedies to water shortages, water quality problems, and access to clean water. Additional information is at Special Events of www.whitakercenter.org/home

---

'Midwinter Macros' On February 20 Highlighted Paxton Creek Biodiversity

After a few years hiatus, PCWEA and partner Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) once again conducted an evening of water bug studies among the wateshed community. On Wednesday, February 20 in Blocker Hall, Room 207 at HACC Wildwood Campus, people gathered from to see, touch, and hear about the marvellous benthic (bottom dwelling) water critters - animalsthat are near the base of food chains, and often serve as indicators of both pollution and the health of streams.

DEP Biologist Kevin Kelly Lead Event

Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) biologist Kevin Kelly, participant in past Macros events, joined by aquatic entomologists Kristin Ditzler of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and David Rebuck also of the DEP introduced college students, the watershed stake-holders, and others to the bugs that scientists call macroinvertebrates. They are an extremely diverse group of organisms such as mayflies, worms, and clams - all without backbones. Attendees were able to view the bugs' wide array of adaptations (sometimes external gills which look a bit like little pontoons) for surviving the rigors of creek waters.

---