Posted in Bay-friendly, children in nature, Galveston Bay, rain garden, runoff pollution, stormwater, tagged runoff, students, water quality, watersheds on March 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Recently I had the opportunity to tell 115 young people about what is most important to me in my work to support water quality and wetlands. The kids and their teachers had insightful questions. One of them was: What can kids do to make sure the water is healthy for us and the animals that depend on it? (more…)
Posted in Bay-friendly, children in nature, Galveston Bay, native plants, runoff pollution, stormwater, stormwater wetlands, wetland restoration, tagged children in nature, Dickinson Bayou, floating wetlands, native plants, runoff, stormwater wetlands, texas master naturalist, video, volunteers, water quality, Wetland Restoration Team on February 10, 2014| 1 Comment »
A video about the floating wetlands project at Clear Creek I.S.D’s Education Village in League City arrived today! See it now.
It shows very well what enthusiasm the students, teachers, and volunteers have for developing a natural environment on campus, especially if it means trying something really new–like floating wetlands. The video was created by Kirk Swann, Janice Scott, and the folks in the CCISD Office of Communications. Thanks ya’ll!
Posted in Galveston Bay, runoff pollution, stormwater, stormwater wetlands, tagged Galveston Bay, parks, runoff, stormwater wetlands, video, water quality, wetlands on December 4, 2013| 1 Comment »
A scene from Cup and Saucer wetlands in Canterbury, NSW, Australia. Source: Sydney Water
Many of us are visual learners, and video-sharing sites like YouTube come to the rescue when we want to gain an understanding of something new and uncommon. That goes for learning about stormwater wetlands too—although good videos portraying them are few and far between. Stormwater wetlands don’t do hilarious tricks or say cute things, and at least for now, they aren’t abundant subjects for filming. However, the key to familiarizing people with their benefits—water quality improvements, habitat, and flood control, among others—is having good examples to which we can refer. Until there are ample stormwater wetland demonstration projects in the Galveston Bay Area, we can rely on “distance learning” through articles, photos, and now, video.
I had a look and curated a few videos to give you the idea of how a stormwater wetland appears.
Posted in Bay-friendly, children in nature, freshwater inflows, Galveston Bay, native plants, runoff pollution, stormwater, tagged children in nature, Dickinson Bayou, floating wetlands, outdoor classroom, schools, stormwater wetlands, water quality on September 6, 2013| 1 Comment »
We are moving closer to installing floating wetland islands in what may be the first such project at a school in Texas, and one of the first public installations anywhere in the state. The floating wetlands will be in the storm water detention basin (aka “the pond”) of the Education Village campus in League City TX, part of the Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD).
Left: Floating wetland islands in Canada. Source: Biohavens International. Right: A pilot project in Baltimore Harbor. Source: Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore.
What is a floating wetland? It’s a small buoyant man-made island that grows wetland plants. CCISD’s islands will be made of a dense mesh of recycled plastic fibers produced by Martin Ecosystems. These floating wetlands have plant, soil and root interactions similar to a natural wetland and provide surfaces for colonies of beneficial water-cleaning microorganisms. (more…)
Posted in Bay-friendly, Galveston Bay, runoff pollution, stormwater on July 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Last month I shared about the connection between septic systems and degraded water quality. I wanted to follow up with some simple this you should and should not do to keep your septic system in good working order.
Do!
Steven Mikulencak
Charriss York
Watershed Texas 