Save the Sound’s Rain Garden Project was designed to protect drinking water supplies in the Quinnipiac River Watershed. Since the program focused on locations where groundwater is a major source of the public water supply, the project has worked with homeowners in the town of Southington, CT with the goal of building residential rain gardens on their properties and preventing stormwater pollution. This project has actively involved residents and volunteers who wanted to help their immediate surroundings and their communities and, in that way, protect the Sound.
Why rain gardens? Rain gardens are not just pretty landscaping features, but are small stormwater facilities that collect and filter stormwater—the rain that runs off roofs and parking lots—and that allow water to be soaked into the ground naturally. Although rain gardens have been the main focus of this education and outreach program, Save the Sound also seeks to implement other green infrastructure techniques to reduce runoff pollution. To learn more about this project and green infrastructure, please visit ReduceRunoff.org.
Photo by Save the Sound, an initiative of Connecticut Fund for the Environment