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MillerCoors donating $75K for local watershed projects

By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

HAMILTON, Ohio — What began as a challenge at the future site of Edgewood School may turn into cash for a land lab project there. The Butler Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) was chosen as one of eight finalists in a competition to win a $25,000 grant, said District Administrator Kevin Fall.

MillerCoors and River Network, a national nonprofit focused on water quality and watershed protection, are partnering to award grants to local nonprofit organizations that protect and restore local water resources through agricultural means. MillerCoors recently donated $75,000 to River Network.

The eight finalists were selected from a pool of applicants nationwide. The winners will be chosen through an online voting competition available at www.rivernetwork.org

MillerCoors will award the organization that receives the most votes a $25,000 grant to complete its proposed project. The second-place winner will receive $15,000 and the third-place recipient will receive $5,000. Five remaining finalists will also receive $1,000.
Butler SWCD has been providing Edgewood School with advice and technical assistance. Construction has not yet begun on the building, but the project was in place when Butler SWCD learned about the competition. The situation was unique because there is no stormwater outlet.

“All of the rainwater that is captured on the site percolates straight down to the aquifer,” Fall said. “It doesn’t go to a stream, it doesn’t go to a river, it goes straight down into the ground and recharges the aquifer.”

If the land, formerly the Rodney Riner farm, was not going to be used for agriculture, the school was the kind of development the SWCD wanted on the property, Fall told the school board. Planning began and the stormwater component – what to do with the water from the site, from the parking lot – was dealt with first.

The school board and administration have been progressive, Fall said. “We worked with the engineers designing this project because they had never had a site where there was no stormwater outlet,” he said. “They wanted to do dry wells – that would increase the hazard of pollution potential.

“They’re doing a three-staged bio retention where all the storm drains go through a bio remediation piece. The water filters down through sand, gravel and plants that can assimilate any hazards out of the material. Then it drains into a basin and infiltrates into another basin, and that third basin has a percolation rate of 55 inches an hour. So that means the water goes straight down into the ground into the aquifer.”

The second part of the project involves a land laboratory the science teachers wanted on the northwestern corner of the property.
“There is also a ditch that receives 200 acres of agricultural drainage on that side of the property,” Fall said. “We’re diverting water from that ditch into a low-lying area with vernal pools, micro pools, plug plantings, prairie plantings, possibly even trees in the future that will then flow through soil layers, sand filters and through plants before it enters into this basin that infiltrates into the ground.”

So the school site will have two examples on the property – the constructed stormwater system and the land laboratory – both of which will purify the storm water before it goes into the aquifer.
“It’s been wonderful,” Fall said. “It’s progressive, it’s unique. It is perfect that it is a public school. The school is going to be able to use it; the science classes are going to be able to test it and build it into their curriculum.”

MillerCoors and River Network encourage the public to support the competition by voting for one of the eight finalists (see related article below for details) at www.rivernetwork.org/forms/votemillercoorsgrantscontest2010
Polls close March 26 at 5 p.m. (PST) and winners will be announced March 31.

3/17/2010