Four steps to building a rain garden

Go on a rainy day hike . . . find out where the water from your driveway and gutters ends up.
A rain garden acts like a native forest capturing this rain water, slowing it down and allowing the water to percolate down into the ground. Compare this action to our common cul de sac where rain generally runs off of the sloped driveway skirts into a storm drain, travels through a pipe and is dumped into the closest stream, lake and ultimately to the Puget Sound. Two reasons the former is a better picture.

1. We need water to be in the ground . . .so we can pump it up. We all drink groundwater in Kitsap County. The only way that water gets there is through rain fall.
2. Rain fall picks up all the people stuff that we put on the ground and carries it to the Sound. Dog poop, oil from cars, chemicals from lawns all become a soup of that robs the Sound of oxygen. Rain gardens act as little factories, cleaning out this goop before the water travels on.

What is a rain garden?
Rain gardens are simply depressions in your yard. It can be any shape or size and can be planted with a variety of different plants. Want one??? Here are the four steps to get that accomplished.

Locate

• Identify the best location for the rain garden.
• Look for the natural drainage from driveways and downspouts.
• You need to do a simple soil test to determine how good the drainage is at this site.

Design & Build

• Determine the size and shape of the rain garden.
• Excavate the soil - only eighteen inches in most cases.
• Level the bottom of the rain garden - don't let it get compacted.
• Mix compost with the soil that you removed.
• Return and level the soil leaving at least a six inch depression to collect water.
• Create an entryway for the water this can be a swale or even a pipe.
• Create a rock lined over flow for those bigger storm events.

Plant

• Select plants that likes wet feet but that can also survive during the dry summers. There are plant lists readily available. Native plants are ideal, but many other plants work, too.
• Cover the soil with mulch
• Water the plants until they are established.

Maintain

• Mulch as needed to cut down on weeding chores.
• Make sure the inlet and outlet are both clear.
• Don't use pesticides or fertilizers. Remember this water is going to your aquifer.
• Water as needed, but if the correct plants were selected this will be required minimally and only in the warmest of weather.

This project is pretty straightforward, but help is available! WSU has a fleet of Master Gardeners waiting in the wings to help you with your rain garden construction. Also, Kitsap County Conservation District will help you with the costs incurred while building your garden. Can't beat that!

I am building a rain garden myself in late summer. I will let you know how it goes!

A rain garden coming to your own front yard

Imagine a garden instead of that ugly naked water hole behind the chained link fence in your neighborhood! Kitsap County is getting on board with the notion that stormwater collection can be beautiful!

County Commissioner Steve Bauer called a meeting yesterday in the Commissioner's chambers on the subject of the County's Water as a Resource policy. Our county is now finally realizing that rain water has been treated as a nuisance that we need to get rid of rather than the most important resource we have. The new policy is to keep this water on our individual properties, allow it to soak in to recharge our aquifers by using bio retention, or rain gardens. I attended this meeting because I was invited. But, 99% of the attendees were county employees. Many Surface and Storm Water Management operations staff attended. Good idea to get the troops on board! This meeting will be followed up with the formation of , you guessed it, a working group with workshops being held for partners working on stormwater projects.

LID or Low Impact Development is by no means a new idea. Sea Street in Seattle has been around since the late 1990's. Engineers, however, have been hesitant to give the go ahead for projects like these because, well, change comes slow. Risking millions of tax payers dollars on innovative projects is a stretch.

Change in Bremerton
Larry Matel from Bremerton urged the City of Bremerton to take just these kinds of risks. He started his presentation with a quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer, If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Refreshing. Larry talked about projects, mostly pervious pavement projects, that are going on around Bremerton. He lamented the fact that recent CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) corrections were done old school with parallel pipes. He thinks this could have been accomplished more cheaply and more efficiently using LID principles. He told us about the Manette Bridge project coming up. He muscled DOT into including a LID system of water collection instead piping the rain water falling on the bridge to the Sound. You will be able to see rain gardens and pervious parking strips along Burwell street soon. I'll take trees and plants over curbs and gutters any day.

Using Waste Water
Next we heard about reclaimed water projects by West Sound Utilities in Port Orchard. Manager, Larry Curles, talked about many proposed uses for reclaimed water that would keep our cleaned up waste water out of the Sound using it for irrigation or even in the High School's heat pumps. Larry says that although reclaimed water is expensive, at some point using it will be a real need and West Sound will be ready.

Examples from the Big Guys
Lastly, Tracy Tackett, Green Stormwater Infrastructure Program Manager from the City of Seattle spoke about projects in the city. Bio retention is her number one focus over pervious payment. This translates into using rain gardens as mini workhorses to clean up polluted water and allow it to slowly infiltrate into the ground. She also spoke of the push for using rain harvesting in the city. She talked about the Sea Street Project and other projects in areas of the city without previous formal drainage systems in place. Her experience is that projects that involve residents upfront are, hands down, more successful. Retrofitting areas with established curbs is a little more complicated. People do value their parking spaces! Seattle has a program called Rainwise. See rainwise.seattle.gov. This web site encourages home owners to build a rain garden in their yards. If they are built to city specifications, the city will essentially fund the project.

There was the prerequisite back slapping to close the meeting, but its true Kitsap is being proactive. Art Castle from Kitsap Homebuilders Association is a champion of Low Impact Development. Visit his webpage: Low Impact Development-Kitsap for LID information. www.kitsaphba.org/LID.

You can look forward to a greener more natural approach to living with storm water.

What to do when your well flunks its sample test

A flunked drinking water test will probably result in a sleepless night. You've done the responsible thing and now you are rewarded with a problem . . . coliform bacteria in your water. Your test slip tells you that at least it isn't e-coli which would mean fecal bacteria in your water. Best to get some bottled water for the next couple of days anyway. First plan of action - redo the test - make sure this time you follow all the directions. Make sure the faucet isn't the source of contamination.

If it comes back unsatisfactory again, you may have to disinfect your well with chlorine. Check with your local health department to get their advice. If you decide to disinfect, purchase a fresh bottle of household bleach without additives. Then get busy:

1. First remove the well casing cover or cap.
2. Add one-half gallon of liquid bleach to the well. If a hose can reach the well, wash down the inner wall. Then close up the well.
3. Turn on an outside house faucet and run it until you can smell chlorine, then turn it off.
4. Repeat this for all of the faucets inside and outside. This is done to move the chlorinated water through the system.
5. Let the chlorine remain in the pipes overnight. If possible, don't use any water.
6. Next day, flush out as much water as possible using outside faucets. Run the water on the ground. Don't get this chlorinated water in ponds, lakes or streams! Forget about washing your jeans for a couple days.
7. Resume normal water use - it may take about five days before all the chlorine is gone.
8. Retest when you are sure the chlorine has disappeared. Use a spa chlorine test to make sure.

How did my well get contaminated?
Contamination may be caused by soil, insects, small animals or animal waste falling in the well. Make sure that access holes for pipes or wires are sealed with clear silicone sealant. Other possibilities include a failed pressure tank bladder. Sleuth out your problem or contamination may reoccur. Make sure you have a 100 feet no pollution zone around your well. This means no fertilizers, no oil or gasoline dumped or stored within that space and that animals and manure piles are kept away from the well. Even construct your compost pile outside of this space.

Sleep easier with a clean well.

Bacteria in my well? How do I know for sure?

Reach in your wallet and bring out twenty-one dollars. This is what it costs for a whole year's worth of peace of mind about the health of your drinking water well when you use it for a bacteriological test.

What am I testing for?
The BacT (using water lingo) is a test for coliform bacteria. The word "coliform" used to give me visions of microscopic monsters. But, not all coliform bacterias make you sick. You probably have coliform on the handle of your coffee cup right now. However, if coliform is in drinking water, it could mean some microscopic monsters are there, too. If the test is positive for coliform, the lab will also test for fecal coliform and e.coli bacteria. If either of of those coliforms are found, don't drink the water!

What do I collect the sample in?
Pick up a sample bottle from your lab of choice. The health district has a list, but Twiss Analytical is the lab PUD uses.

Where do I test from?
The best sample point is a metal outside hose bib. Take off any screens or washers. Flame the threads of the faucet with cigarette lighter for one minute.

How do I test my drinking water?
Once the sample point is sterilized, run cold water through the faucet for a full five minutes. Don't let water splash back onto the faucet! Make the stream clear, steady and consistent not a gusher. Use this time to fill out your paperwork.

Don't rinse the bottle! The powder inside the bottle is an important part of the test!

1. Turn the water down so the water stream is about as thick as a pencil.
2. Remove the plastic seal on the bottle
3. Remove the lid. Hold it in your hand. Do not contaminate this lid by touching inside the cap.
4. Fill the bottle just above the 100 milliliter line. Do not touch the threads of the bottle.
5. Screw the lid back on securely, dry of the outside of the bottle and wrap the paperwork around the bottle

Keep the sample cool and return it to the lab as soon as possible. If the sample is more than 30 hours old, you will have to retest. Twiss has pick up points around the county. The lab will have your results back in 24 hours.

There you go - easy and you are good to go for another year. Don't forget to check in with the lab about other tests that need to be done regularly, but less frequently.

Who is watching your drinking water?

If you had no air to breath I guess clean water wouldn't be much of a priority. Otherwise - it should be because you drink it, play in it and, yes, even breath it. Who is making sure your water is good enough to drink? Well, that depends. It depends on how your water is supplied.

OK in Kitsap all of our water comes from pretty much the same bucket. This bucket is underground and known as an aquifer. We do not get any water from snow pack and only City of Bremerton customers get water from the Casad Dam Reservoir and only part of the time.
So 80% of Kitsap residents get drinking water from drinking water wells. If you have your own well, hopefully you already know this. If you are on "city" water or PUD water or get your water from any organized water system it still comes from underground.

1. Systems with more than 15 connections (Group A). Back to the question who is watching your drinking water? The Safe Drinking Water act requires that organized water systems that have over 15 hookups must test for contaminants on a regular basis and report the results to the state Department of Health and to everyone who is on that system. That is why many of you receive a Customer Confidence Report (CCR) every June. The law requires that these water suppliers do Bacteriologic tests monthly and test for nitrates annually. Other tests are done on a three or four year schedule including tests for lead and copper. If you are on a system that has 15 or more connections, you better be getting a CCR in the mail.
2. Systems with two or more connections but less than 15 (Group B). These wells are shared by two or more households, but less than 15. There are 900 of these systems in Kitsap! It is presently a state law that these wells must be tested, but requirements are less - a bacteriologist test once and year and nitrate test every three years. Many of these group B folks hire a company to manage the system and take the water samples. State Department of Health and the local Kitsap Health District monitors that this testing is being done. This law is changing however. The legislature, in the effort to save money, is considering eliminating some or all of the requirements for group B water systems. To learn more about this visit the WA State Department of Health Drinking Water website.
3. Private Wells. There are thousands of private wells in the county. Many of these wells supply water to just one home. There is no requirement for testing these single family homes. Does that mean it shouldn't be done? Common sense says that you need to take a sample at least once a year. Take it to a lab and have it tested for at least bacteriological contamination. Do it today because you and your family depend on clean drinking water.
   

So, to answer our question: Who is responsible for your drinking water? You are. Learn where your water supply is coming from and keep track of your water's health.

Silverdale Water wins taste test

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the tastiest water of all? Looks like its Wisconsin's Stevens Point Water followed by New York City and our own Silverdale Water District tying for third with Lincoln Water System of Nebraska.

The judging was held at the American Water Works Association (AWWA) annual national conference in Chicago yesterday. This is no mean accomplishment for our yummy Kitsap County Water. Competition was made up of regional taste winners from all across the country.

The judging panel rated each water system on its flavor characteristics. Judges were Stephen Booth, Ph.D., of Kennedy/Jenks, who is also chair of AWWA’s Taste and Odor Committee; Monique Durand, engineer at Hazen and Sawyer, P.C and member of the same committee; Pinar Omur-Ozbek, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University; and Matt Rodewald, reporter for Chicago’s NBC affiliate.

Not too shabby. Think about that when you pay $2 for a tiny plastic bottle. I'm filling my own bottle with Kitsap County water, the third best in the land.

Puget Sound's Invisible Shoreline

I went to John William's The Invisible Shoreline video tour Saturday night at the Poulsbo Marine Science Center. I have not been to the Science Center in a while. I forgot how fascinating it is to get a peak at the underwater creatures. We got to see crabs delicately dining on a clam dinner. I could relate having just come from one myself. The center is housing a huge octopus in the large tank in the foyer. He (I found out how to tell it is a he) was extremely active . . .ballooning up and thrashing around the tank. He even did a few head butts on the window. Niki, MSC volunteer, told us this boisterous activity wasn't typical and wondered if it was time to release him to find his soul-mate in the depths.

The tiny auditorium at the center was packed. Obviously there is interest in our Puget Sound life. It was a free event sponsored by one of our KEEP/ECONet grants. John showed clips of underwater videos shot by him and his diving buddies. Amazing stuff going on down there. Sea Slugs are definitely much more attractive than the terrestrial kind. We were amused by a hitchhiking worm protecting his host by giving a sea star a painful pinch. John slipped in episodes of education in between clips: teaching about wave action, differences in tidal zones and that, indeed, Puget Sound health starts with picking up dog poop.

Looking around, I did recognize a few folks as members of the "choir". But the viewing definitely drew from a larger population. To reach even more new audiences . . .maybe he needs to show his footage on the wide screens in bars. I did learn that John has his own TV show on BKAT. For more information, visit: http://SEA-Inside.org.