Rain gardens at WITC promote health of Lake Superior Watershed

August 2, 2012

Members of the Chequamegon Bay Area Partnership (CBAP) have been working to ensure hopes for improved water quality in the Lake Superior Watershed don't go down the drain - literally. A drain funneling rainfall into Bay City Creek, which then flows into Lake Superior, has become a series of native wildflower rain gardens that capture runoff water from Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College (WITC).

WITC and the Ashland County Land and Water Conservation Department, a CBAP partner, worked along with Northern Native Plantscapes and contractor K&D Excavating to complete the $35,000 project in summer 2010. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation funded the work along with another CBAP partner, the city of Ashland. The three rain gardens at WITC are not only pleasing to the eye, but they also serve a practical purpose. When heavy rains fell on June 20, the gardens filtered runoff streaming out of the technical college parking lot and slowed the flow of water into the surrounding creek.

"If we're not filtering the runoff from roofs, streets and parking lots during rainstorms, then litter, sediment and pollution is running straight into Bay City Creek and eventually Lake Superior," said Tom Fratt, conservationist for the Ashland County Land and Water Conservation Department.

Ted May, academic dean for renewable energy and sustainability at WITC, credits a lot of elbow grease in the success of the gardens, as well as assistance from Northland College students who installed native plants.

"It's satisfying to see," said May. "The gardens serve as a visual reminder of the merits of planning and maintaining diverse plantings for storm water management, as well as the ecological benefits these bring to the environment and community."

The project was part of an effort to demonstrate storm water management in urban settings as part of the Fish Creek Watershed management plan, which encompasses the city of Ashland. The Fish Creek Watershed plan identifies sediment as one of the primary water quality issues facing Fish Creek and Chequamegon Bay, dumping roughly the equivalent of 117 pick-up truckloads of sediment into the bay daily.

The Ashland County Land and Water Conservation Department provided engineering expertise. Northland College students working at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute (SOEI) were enlisted to help install subsurface drainage, complete final grading of the gardens, plant hundreds of native plants and mulch to minimize weed growth. The Chequamegon Bay Area Partnership is a unique coalition of federal, state and local natural resource agencies, tribes, municipalities, nonprofit organizations, county land and water conservation professionals, Northland College staff and faculty. The group collaborates to provide more effective and efficient natural resource management in the Chequamegon Bay region. In addition to the SOEI, participating members have been comprised of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Red Cliff and Bad River Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa, Ashland, Bayfield and Iron Counties, the Cities of Ashland and Bayfield, the Bad River Watershed Association, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Northwoods Cooperative Weed Management Area, UW Extension, the Bayfield Regional Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. For more information, people may visit the CBAP website online at https://www.northland.edu/cbap.htm.