Rain Check: Creative ways to use stormwater to your advantage

Erin Garrett: 00:06

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Erin Garrett,

Amy Lefringhouse: 00:14

And I'm your cohost, Amy Lefringhouse.

Erin Garrett: 00:16

And today, we are here with Eliana Brown, and she is the water quality and storm water specialist for Illinois Indiana Sea Grant and Illinois Extension. Welcome, Eliana.

Eliana Brown: 00:28

Great to be here, Erin and Amy. Thanks so much for inviting me. Thanks for that nice introduction too.

Erin Garrett: 00:34

Yeah. We're excited to chat with you today, and we know we have a lot of questions that we wanna get into, but before we dive into that, we kind of want to take a step back and just ask you a little bit, your title was a little bit of a mouthful, can you tell us about what you do in your work with Sea Grant and with Extension?

Eliana Brown: 00:54

So I came Extension and Sea Grant after managing the university stormwater program for ten years. I am really passionate about stormwater management and green infrastructure. When I started here in Extension, I managed the nutrient loss reduction strategy program for the university, and I took on leading the renovation to the Red Oak Rain Garden. As you said, I'm now Extension's water and sea grant's water quality and stormwater specialist working for NREE program leader, Dr Kar, and I serve as the director of the Red Oak Rain Garden. I lead a team that looks into how green stormwater infrastructure, which is also known as nature based solutions, can reduce flooding and improve water quality. And, you know, it seems like these days we're either in feast or famine as far as rain goes, and many Illinois communities need assistance and resources to prepare for floods and drought. Flooding is the most common and costly disaster in The US, and every county in Illinois has faced it badly enough to be declared a federal disaster area. We also collaborate with campus researchers and the water survey to create toolkits that help communities prepare for floods and sets them up for success, and we partner with our colleagues at Community and Economic Development to bring these resources to rural Illinois. An exciting part is that these efforts don't just help communities prepare for disasters, they also enhance neighborhoods, create recreational spaces, and improve water quality for activities like fishing. To bring this information directly to the public, I coordinate programs that you wonderful educators provide to your communities, such as watershed stewards and the rainscaping education program. These help people understand all aspects of water and teach them how to build rain gardens. And as you probably know, a lot of folks are really interested in rain gardens these days, to help with flooding and water quality, and also to bring, like, those wonderful pollinators to their own yards and engage kids in these topics too.

Erin Garrett: 02:49

You do just a few things, right? A few things.

Eliana Brown: 02:52

Well, I have a fantastic team. There is there's a lot of work to be done with stormwater and water quality, and and we're just so honored to be able to do it.

Erin Garrett: 03:03

Definitely. And I hope our listeners can hear why we brought you on the podcast because everything had to do with water, which is our theme. So, of course, we have quite a few folks from Sea Grant that are joining us, which is really exciting for us, getting to kinda tap into all of your expertise and share that with all of our listeners. So we're really excited to have you and to chat with you today about stormwater.

Amy Lefringhouse: 03:26

You talked a lot about what you did. Let's go back to the basics and just start with, like, a basic definition of stormwater.

Eliana Brown: 03:36

Stormwater is just rain or snow melt that flows over hard impervious surfaces like, you know, roads, buildings, parking lot. There are two main challenges with stormwater, the the quantity, so the amount, and quality, like how clean it is. And spoiler alert, what's really cool about stormwater is that you as an individual can actually play a big part in solutions. Not every environmental problem kind of feels that way. Right? Some feel pretty big, but with stormwater, you can definitely make an impact, and it can even be rewarding and beautiful.

Amy Lefringhouse: 04:12

That is spoken from a true stormwater. I don't wanna say nerd because sometimes

Eliana Brown: 04:18

I'm a self professed stormwater geek here. I do have I do have a story of stormwater that I'd like to tell you.

Amy Lefringhouse: 04:23

Absolutely.

Eliana Brown: 04:24

Alright. So it used to be that communities focused mainly on sending stormwater away. Like, it it, you know, it goes into storm drain. It gets collected into storm drains, conveyed into pipes that that go to nearby streams and lakes. Right? So the goal is simple, protect property and keep roads clear during storms. All good things, mind you. We we wanna have those. But here's the problem. As cities and towns expand and create more of those hard surfaces, the amount of stormwater runoff increases, and pipes can't keep up, which can lead to flooding and big storms, and then all of a sudden property's flooded and roads are underwater. And there is also a consequence to sending all that water to the streams and lakes. They end up in trouble in two main ways. First, the rainwater that runs off entire neighborhoods, it can be powerful enough to erode those stream banks every time it rains. Like, so it used to be, like, with without getting all that neighborhood rain in a big storm, a stream might you know, it might that might happen every once in a while, but now every time it rains, it's getting it's getting hit. And and the problem with that is that the eroded soil makes the water muddy, and it harms aquatic habitats. So with that, I'm gonna I'm gonna define the term watershed. So watershed is all the land that would be draining to that waterbody. And if you have 10% of that watershed as a hard surface, you're gonna get measurable water quality impairments, and at 25%, it's significant. A little bit more is another way that we can help with storm water that our lakes and rivers can be in trouble. All that storm water is it flows over streets, lawns, driveways, it picks up all kinds of pollutants like, you know, anything on the land bird droppings, car oil, brake dust, lawn chemicals, pet waste, and and even those fall leaves and and spring blossoms too. If that if that gets into the street, it gets really high in phosphorus, and all of that gets carried into rivers and lakes untreated. So everything washed into storm drains goes directly to nearby waterways. So that's where we're here today facing both quantity and quality challenges with stormwater, but but, you know, there is hope.

Amy Lefringhouse: 06:34

Thinking about stormwater right now just like in this podcast, when I was younger, I just was like, it it is it is what it is. Right? I didn't pay attention to it. Like, oh, yay. It rained really hard. We can go splash around in our front yard where it was, you know, draining down. And but just to think about it a little bit more in-depth about how to manage it is just I don't know. I guess it's just something I don't think about every day. It's just something you take for granted. Right? That it's all gonna just go away, and it goes away and nothing happens, right? I don't see anything physically happening. But what you're bringing to light, Eliana, is there are lots of things that are impacted by, you know, like you said, that the quantity of rain that we're having in a lot of these rainfall events is really having an impact on on our communities.

Eliana Brown: 07:24

Yeah. Yeah. It can. But, you know, the the systems that we have in place, those were all good reasons. You know, we wanted we need we need to protect our property. We need to have we need to have these storm systems. We need to have these pipes. They're they're not bad in of themselves. It's just that that there is this consequence, and so we want to have this good thing. We want to have dry streets. We also want to have this good thing of having good water quality, Like, you know, I used to go fishing as a kid. I want people to enjoy boating. We wanna be able to we need that water for for our drinking water resources too. So if we wanna have these both good things, that is where something like green storm water infrastructure comes in. And I loved your description, Amy, of you being a kid and having fun in the water because that is exactly the kind of thing that we we that we wanna that water can be. And with green stormwater infrastructure, we can bring some of that joy back and have a stormwater management that is more of an amenity for a community.

Erin Garrett: 08:28

Yeah. I love that because you're already getting into my next question, Eliana, which is my favorite. It keeps happening this season on podcast, and I'm a fan of it. So can you tell us what green infrastructure is, kind of break down what that concept is, and then how it plays a role in our stormwater management.

Eliana Brown: 08:45

Absolutely. One of my favorite topics. So alright. So you're just talking about how okay. How stormwater systems, they send the water away. So it kinda it treats it treats water as a waste. The thing that green storm water infrastructure is that it's capturing water lands, and it uses it as a resource. water is expensive. Like, if from from I mean, like, you know, from your time your water bill, whether that is individually expensive is a matter of a number of things, but we're talking about, like, for a community, it's expensive to have water treatment plants. It's expensive to have the upkeep and everything that comes to that. So with green stormwater infrastructure, that's where the the where you could really use stormwater to its to as an advantage. The infrastructure itself mimics the natural ecosystems. So you might have heard not have heard of rain gardens. Rain gardens are a great example of it. Rainwater harvesting, like rain barrels and cisterns are another. Permeable pavement, so the replacing, of parking lots and driveways with concrete impervious asphalt that actually can soak in the water. Green roofs is another one, And then and I always want to say even just our our trees. Trees can soak up a lot of rainwater, so they're super important in this system. Additionally, we wanna let that soak that water soak into the ground, and that replenishes groundwater, which is very important. One of my one of my stormwater heroes because, you know, a stormwater geek, I'm gonna have a stormwater hero. One of stormwater hero is a man named Roger Bannerman from from Wisconsin, and he was a researcher there. He was noticing that the groundwater levels were decreasing, and he found that it it was because we weren't soaking in enough. It was all too much of it was going running off is is storm water. So he became a big proponent of rain gardens, and he's the reason I actually learned about rain gardens twenty years ago when I'm visiting Wisconsin. I just I'd started my job managing the university storm water program, and I brought that idea back to the university campus, and that's how, that's how the Red Oak Rain Garden got started. Other green stormwater infrastructure techniques that let water soak into the ground are urban wetlands. I didn't mention urban wetlands. This can be really important for taking the stormwater for an entire neighborhood, bioswales or another. The green roofs delay that peak flow. So, you know, that that hit that I was talking about, they're really good for making that not beat so, so hard. Of course, those also have other benefits like energy savings. Green stormwater infrastructure can be at a number of different scales, so that's also one of the things I like about it. So I can have a small rain garden, but, like, an entire community can have that constructed wetland, that urban wetland, which can be really helpful. They can be used alongside our existing gray infrastructure. So a good example of that is if you have your house, maybe has a storm drain that's right up on the road out in front of the house, you can put in a rain garden that that intercepts the water that would be coming off of your roof. But then if we have a super big rain, it can just overflow into that existing manhole, and that's really nice. One other thing I wanna tell you about green stormwater infrastructure, and then I will take a breath because I could talk about this all day, and I know we don't need to have that be in a whole day podcast, but there are these other benefits, and that's that's the other thing that kind of really gets me super excited about it. It can be super beautiful and real enhancements for communities, and that's really where that engineering meets landscape architecture and urban planning, providing these amenities that revitalize downtowns and provide respites of well-being. We're constantly being told at the Red Oak Rain Garden that it helps with people's mental health. We have heard from some students that they even select to live in the the neighboring dormitory because there's no other place on campus that has that level of natural beauty, and we do see that firsthand. It's like an increase in biodiversity that comes from having that green stormwater infrastructure. Our iNaturalist project has 266 observations that feature 165 different species of plants, insects, more, so we love it.

Amy Lefringhouse: 13:12

Eliana, you talked about a lot about urban storm water and what's going on in cities, and, you know, I look out my window and I see the manhole in the in the water rushing down during storms down the street, but I've also lived on a farm. I've also lived outside of town, and I've lived in a small lake community too. It was just a little small lake community. So what are like, how do those stormwater practices differ when you, you know, live in different places?

Eliana Brown: 13:45

That's a great question. So stormwater approaches and methods, they're they are they're gonna vary based on the unique characteristics of of each setting. With green stormwater infrastructure, some of them are gonna make more economic sense in certain areas. Okay. An an urban wetland, for example, is gonna take up a lot of land. Sure. It's not going to be practical, say, in, like, a heavily developed area. You know, Downtown Chicago, land prices are way too high to put in something like that, so it's going to make more sense there to use something like a green roof even though it's it's more expensive per amount of stormwater captured to have a green roof. You have to consider a whole building, and there's other costs involved with that. But for a a rural setting, it's gonna have that advantage of having different economic reality for for land prices and and different uses for that. And for, say, like, smaller towns may not have as many people trained in green stormwater infrastructure as maybe a larger place would, but that's one of the places where extension can exist. We can help well, my team is working on a maintenance curriculum that's going to help break down some barriers for our small towns to be able to install green stormwater infrastructure. And we're really excited to to be getting to do that project. Maintenance can really be an issue for larger places as well, though. Even on campus when the Red Oak Rain Garden was built, the maintenance wasn't feasible for the university's facilities to do because their limited staff had to do so many other things. Mhmm. And so the garden really suffered at that point. So there are with with that particular instance, it wasn't until a few years later I saw when I was teaching a Master Naturalist class that there was interest in having some involvement with it, and especially with folks that were trained through the Master Naturalist program, we were able to bring that as a project, and I decided to pursue the renovation to Red Oak Rain Garden because of of of that interest. So sometimes it it it can be a a thing where you have certain if you have local local folks that are really interested in doing various things, that can make something possible. So it's not only the land, but the people and the interest and excitement around a project. And for us, when we had no. I had this group of really talented students that included Lane Knoche, who's now an outreach associate, and I know it's gonna be on one of your future podcasts. I led that group. We redesigned. We re reimagined the Red Oak Rain Garden only because we had that support, the people of the extension volunteers in partnership with facilities and some student groups. And with service learning and continued continual education, well, that's just been a really good formula for us to be able to to have that there. I am really curious, Amy, I know, like, at at Nauvoo, you were part of that rainscaping Yeah. Program, and they had a dedicated group of folks there Yes. That were were able to have that rain garden be put in.

Amy Lefringhouse: 17:05

Yep. They it's volunteer led. The rain garden in Nauvoo, Illinois is volunteer led. And they've actually put in, I think, two two or more additional rain gardens after that initial installation. So they really took the concept of rain garden and, you know, ran with it. And they also have access to a greenhouse, so they raised some of the plants, you know, that they put in their rain garden sites, so it's really taken off, and they've presented about them at some of our local gardening and master naturalist programs, so it's been good.

Eliana Brown: 17:44

Oh, that's great. And that, you know, that's that's one of those ways that a small group of individuals can really have influence on other folks in order to have have stormwater be more front of mind. Mhmm. People are thinking about it and and can make a difference in our own communities.

Erin Garrett: 18:03

Mhmm. When we're thinking about the difference between, like, urban and rural settings, you know, a lot of the times there's a difference in resources that are available, and just looking at, you know, it all sounds great. Green infrastructure sounds amazing, but what is, like, a cost differential between some of these practices versus, like, the traditional way of doing things? Like, I think permeable pavement, right, as an example in a parking lot. Do you have a ballpark idea, or like, number, which I know is hard, of like a difference between traditional pavement versus permeable pavement, and then, like, are there incentives for communities and, like, grants available and help in order to, like, implement some of these practices?

Eliana Brown: 18:49

That's a really great question. A really great question. And, you know, with something like a parking lot, you know, there's a number of ways that you can do it. There's there's the, like, the the full blown consideration of it. It's not only just what you're putting in, but it's the maintenance and and and do you for permeable pavement, do you actually tell us if you're in a small town, do you have a tractor truck that's gonna be able to to come in and debris out of the the the the parking lot, whereas and but for conventional parking lots, you also have maintenance costs of, say, all the sealant that has to go on. So there's the and I'm not an economist. Need to talk with Margaret Schneemann of Sea Grant to to get the the numbers with a better specificity, but that sort of, like, whole lifestyle cost analysis is something that aged community would have to do. A lot of parking lots will have some kind of vegetation, and our a lot of the parking lots that we have will have beds that maybe have a tree or a tree or whatever, but they don't receive the storm water. And and so if you're putting something in and you're gonna have that anyway, it could be something that the engineer designer would make it be the other way, have some of the stormwater go into those beds instead. And and there really wouldn't be too much of a of a cough differential on that. Yeah. There was a second part of your question, but I'm not sure that I answered that part.

Erin Garrett: 20:30

Just if you know of, like, grants or incentives for maybe smaller communities that don't necessarily have the capacity to to implement some of these practices.

Eliana Brown: 20:40

Yeah. Yeah. So the Illinois EPA does have a really nice grant program called the Green Infrastructure Grant Opportunities. Okay. They also offer low interest loans for Stormwater. That's an expansion off of their already low interest loans that they do for other kinds of water features or water treatment plants. Within well, this is a nationwide thing, but within Illinois, there's also something that any size community can do if they want to do it, they wish to do it, and that's called a stormwater utility fee. That is where you have thinking of stormwater as a utility, one way to pay for some of the things that you might be doing in a community is having a a small fee that everybody pays into you, and that's earmarked for some of these projects. Currently, there are only three, four of them in Illinois, and there are other states that have a lot more of them. Like, Florida has more than 200, for example. So they have differing popularity throughout the nation in different states. Just, you know, like, it it catches on somewhere, and it is catching on here. We are starting to have more and more of them in no one way to help with some of that funding.

Erin Garrett: 22:05

Okay. Interesting. So there are different options out there that communities could look into if that's something that they wanted to make a priority was green infrastructure to kind of help fund and supplement that. That's awesome. Yeah.

Erin Garrett: 22:18

Alright. So we've been talking about a lot of the ways that we can handle storm water in different ways, not necessarily just trying to get rid of it, keeping it in place. So what kind of what's the impact? You kind of mentioned a lot of them just as we've gone, but in general, if we look at broad environmental impacts of poor stormwater management, what are we kind of looking at, and then, you know, how can we kind of mitigate those impacts?

Eliana Brown: 22:43

Yeah. Okay. So Illinois EPA has looked into this, and they estimate that from only urban stormwater alone, that in the state of Illinois, there's more than a thousand miles and 40,000 acres of lakes that are impacted, impaired because of urban storm water. And a lot of those are near population centers in Illinois, and and that kind of makes sense. Right? Because I was talking about those hard surfaces. Our population center centers tend to have more of those hard surf We always have to remember that storm water goes untreated into storm drains. Now I know we're recording this at the December, and I think folks will be listening to it in early spring. So it'll be within recent memory for them when we had snow. And you know how snow, like, really good visual of this is snow. In the first couple of days of snow, it's, like, pristine. And then then on the roads, it starts to look grungy and and, you know, not so pristine anymore. Well, that's your visual for what that's your visual for stormwater pollution. That's all the stuff that's on the road, and the snow melts goes into those lakes and rivers untreated. Oh, it's a it's a really good way to think about it.

Eliana Brown: 24:09

Anything that happens on the land or happens on the road is going to end up in in our water bodies. So that's where we really wanna kinda be thinking about what we are doing on the land for ourselves in terms of, like, housekeeping. So if you, for example, are putting fertilizer on your lawn, you wanna have a nice lawn. Fair enough. You don't do it right before a rainstorm.

Eliana Brown: 24:33

Like, you're not first of all, you're kind of wasting your money because it's gonna wash off, and it's not even gonna help your lawn, and then it ends up and and causes can can contribute to algal blooms. We have a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus that ends up in our water bodies. Harmful algal blooms, and then harmful algal blooms can happen, and that really makes an impact a negative impact, say, our recreational areas Mhmm. Apart from then when it goes down to the Mississippi River and we end up with the issues that they have there with the the dead zone. We don't wanna be contributing to that.

Eliana Brown: 25:11

Also, we're doing something on our lawn. We wanna and we're spending the time and money to do it. We wanna make sure that it's having the impact there that we want it to have. You can check out Sea Grant's Lawn to Lake program. That's a really great way to get some resources and some good information on on what to do.

Eliana Brown: 25:30

I'm always a proponent, and Erin and Amy, I know Erin, you especially, I think you're gonna agree with me on this. I'm always a proponent to maybe not have as much lawn and start bringing in some native plants, perhaps some of those beautiful native grasses that you talk about, Erin. We that's that I I know one of my one of my master gardener friends will every year just kind of chip away at the lawn, so she'll she'll move the border of her native plant beds. It took her husband like five years to figure out what she was doing.

Amy Lefringhouse: 26:09

That's awesome. I'm going to adopt that strategy.

Erin Garrett: 26:12

Like it.

Amy Lefringhouse: 26:13

Well, seems manageable, right? You're like, oh, I'm just going to expand it just a tiny bit?

Erin Garrett: 26:17

A little bit, yeah. Just a little bit, and a

Eliana Brown: 26:19

few more beautiful native plants and and and pollinators. Smart thing they do. So those are good. Those are just little things that that can make a big difference. You know, I'm always gonna gonna say great things about green stormwater infrastructure.

Eliana Brown: 26:35

Right? Really, especially for things like sediment, it can reduce that by as much as 90%. There we have, like, a ton of studies that show the the great pollution reductions that we see as the heavy metals, for example. Like, if you have in in the Northwest, they have they're always trying to they always need to protect, say, their their salmon and some of their some of the heavy metals from their roof. There are industries, whole industries that have made these really cool little stormwater planters, but they're not small.

Eliana Brown: 27:12

They're they're big by, like, a by by they make them out of big toads. But kind of like a a so it's kind of like a movable rain garden and that that they put under some of their roofs to reduce the amount of heavy metals so that they can protect the the salmon. That's fascinating.

Amy Lefringhouse: 27:31

That is cool. How creative we can be. So regulations and policies in our communities, like we're thinking, okay, we wanna do some green stormwater management infrastructure. Sorry. I got that wrong, I think, On our on our property, on our yard, or even advocate that in our community, what about regulations, policies?

Amy Lefringhouse: 27:53

How do they play in our decision making?

Eliana Brown: 27:56

They play a really big part. Basically, how we handle storm water. Okay. They set guidelines for managing runoff to make sure that we keep our water clean, prevent flooding, and just to keep everybody on an even playing field. And the the regulations are here for a reason.

Eliana Brown: 28:12

I already told you the story of stormwater, and I tell you the very brief story of stormwater regulations. So, you know, in the way back when after the Cuyahoga River, you know, burned at least 13 times, the Clean Water Act was enacted 1972, and those were really looking at those end of pipe. So, like, wastewater treatment plants, the point source pollution. And a lot of our our our lakes and rivers water quality improved a lot, but not as much as as as was expected and hoped for. And so in in the eighties, there were a number of studies that a lot of studies nationwide that was looking into what's what's going on?

Eliana Brown: 28:52

What's the cause of this? And and the stormwater runoff. And so more regulations came into pass. There was the clean water amendment in 1987, and that started the first stormwater regulations came down in 1990. That was phase one, and those were large large municipal communities.

Eliana Brown: 29:11

Then in 2003, so we only had one of those in Illinois, and it wasn't Chicago. It's Chicago is actually under a different kind of system. It was Rockford. But then in 2003, small stormwater communities, the acronym is MS 4, those regulations came down. There were more than 300.

Eliana Brown: 29:30

We have a lot of them in Illinois. And that's actually the the program that I was managing for the university. University is considered a small municipality because we own our storm system. But there are the thing with those regulations that were really that I think are really interesting for the the the treatment plants, they had to come up and meet these numerical standards and do a bunch of testing. With the municipalities, they had come up with a plan that had six main parts of a plan, and for a lot of municipalities, they were always very rightly concerned with flooding, and and and that was the thing with stormwater that that they were really looking at.

Eliana Brown: 30:09

And this plan broadened that out so that to a number of things, also including public outreach and education. So people in the community would know what was going on with stormwater and and encourage these people to make their own individual choices that could also help themselves and their own property and the community. Mhmm.

Amy Lefringhouse: 30:34

I think regulations and policies are one of those things that I, like, gloss over when I was in school. But then as I grow up and just, like, learn more, I just I don't know. I just find it very interesting to look back at history and just see how it shaped everything. And I guess I don't gloss over it as much, you know, as as an adult now, you know, listening to you and how it's kind of evolved in stormwater management. I've listened to some lectures about just land ownership and the history of the policies of land ownership over time, and it's just I don't know. It is kind of fascinating, I will say.

Eliana Brown: 31:11

It's fascinating. It it I I agree with you. And, you know, I mean, oh, boy, regulation is not something that a lot of people like, and that's fair. And the other hand, they've had these regulations are based in science and based in in trying to make sure that there isn't one group of folks that's maybe profiting at the expense of an entire community. So they they do have a place.

Amy Lefringhouse: 31:41

Mhmm.

Erin Garrett: 31:42

Yeah. And I think it's important when you can break it down and understand why the regulation is there. Right? It's really easy to just be like, ugh. Right.

Erin Garrett: 31:49

Why does it make everything more difficult or more expensive where we have to meet all these guidelines? But kind of understanding, of course, you know, the background. It's there. Right. A lot of the times they're there for a reason, and so just being more cognizant of that can just help you understand your community a little bit better, and your environment and kind of the fuller picture of what's going on there. Right? For sure.

Eliana Brown: 32:12

Yeah. Well said. Well said.

Amy Lefringhouse: 32:14

Eliana, quick question. When you say flooding, are you so I'm from West Central Illinois.

Amy Lefringhouse: 32:21

I'm from a river town.

Amy Lefringhouse: 32:22

Right? A river town. So when I think of flooding, I'm like, oh my gosh. Levees, sandbagging, big time flooding. When you talk about flooding in the stormwater sense, are you're talking about, like, street flooding, yard flooding, you know, like, what does that mean exactly?

Amy Lefringhouse: 32:41

I know that seems like a kind of a funny question.

Eliana Brown: 32:43

But No. It's a it's a great question. It's a great question, and and it's kind of all the above. And Great. Where I'm at, we're, like, you know, Boneyard Creek is like, it's a small creek.

Eliana Brown: 32:55

It's it's not the Mississippi River. So

Amy Lefringhouse: 32:56

Right. Okay.

Eliana Brown: 32:57

But but there's a lot of in in Eastern Illinois, a lot of Illinois, we have we were we we built cities and small towns in what used to be wetlands, and so that's why we put in those pipes. Sure. And we're at a place now because of those cities expanding that I would say water always wins in end, and so those those came those came back. So, yeah, so basement flooding, yard flooding I mean Street flooding, but also what you're talking about with river flooding, with those kinds of of things that you need to have in place with the sandbags with with when the when the river gets high.

Erin Garrett: 33:38

That's really interesting because I grew up next to the Fox River too in our community, and so we would always and we would cross it to get to school every day on the bridge, and so you could always tell, like, how high the water was. Right? There was, a level, and then, like, right in that community, they built a few parks in that area, so, like, sometimes the parks would flood. I had a friend that lived, like, right next to the river, and sometimes, you know, it like, the water would get to their house, and so being more mindful that we didn't live directly on the river. But just, like, that whole concept too, like you were talking, Amy, like living in that town.

Erin Garrett: 34:15

Like, flooding means different things to different people. Right? And can have very serious implications. Right? Whereas for me right now, it's just like a pond in my yard.

Erin Garrett: 34:24

Right? When I was like, that's kind of the impact. So just kind of keeping that in mind that, like, we all have different perceptions and and realities. I guess realities is the better word of what flooding means in our communities.

Eliana Brown: 34:37

I I can remember oh, come on. I was a grad student years ago. That was when the the Mississippi had really big flooding, and people couldn't get from you all couldn't get from Iowa and Illinois, and, like, it was it that was huge implications on people's lives.

Amy Lefringhouse: 34:57

Oh, and it's still you know, that was maybe the ninety three flood? I don't know. That was That's

Eliana Brown: 35:01

the one I'm thinking about. Yep.

Amy Lefringhouse: 35:03

Yeah. That was the biggest impact. I was 13 at the time, and it was just very impactful for me, and and we still talk about it. We still, you know, have stories about it here. It's our it's our community history.

Erin Garrett: 35:14

So There's a flood marker down the street from me that shows where the floodwaters got. Mean, like, well, that gives me hope. It wasn't quite to my house yet, and so if that happens yet, But lots of things have changed in our environment since then, and we've built things up a lot, so, like, that doesn't really mean anything. Right? Or

Eliana Brown: 35:34

It's interesting, though, like, like, it all kinda comes down yeah. Those are the like, physically, those are very different kinds of floods. And but when you are talking about, say, like, your basement taking on water, there is, I think, a a common emotional aspect of the stress that is around the flooding and how much it's going to cost you, what you're losing, what those implications are going to be, and the anguish that can come from water. Water is is such a force that it's such a I'm obviously fascinated by water, that it it is such a life giving thing that is necessary. Water weighs, like, a little bit more than eight.

Eliana Brown: 36:19

It's 8.3 pounds per gallon. And so when you're talking gallons and gallons of water, it actually becomes a a force that can do significant damage. So it it is really this this incredible thing that enhances our life and that we have to have a lot of respect for and work with and have a good understanding of it that we can befriend it and be able to have our property and really our mental health enhanced by it rather than impacted negatively.

Erin Garrett: 36:56

Yeah. You just took me back to when we moved into our new house last year, and there was over the course of forty eight hours, I think we got 13 inches of rain. Oh. And that was fun when we were down in the basement because, you know, the tornado sirens were going off, so we were taking cover in the middle of the night, and there's just water pouring into the basement from like where the there used to be an old window, and then they converted that to where our air conditioner comes in, and we were like, oh my gosh, what did we do? We bought this house, and that was like, that rain event, right, that doesn't that doesn't happen all the time, but when it happens, what are the implications of it?

Erin Garrett: 37:37

And like, we haven't seen that happen since, right, because we haven't had a rain event like that, but we're like, okay, that needs to be like sealed and like fixed right there. But it was just like that panic, right, as like new homewaters were like, what do we do?

Eliana Brown: 37:50

Oh, no. Like That panic and that the feeling of hopeless or helplessness, helplessness.

Erin Garrett: 37:55

Yeah.

Erin Garrett: 37:55

So we've chatted a lot about different examples of stormwater management projects. I know for me, it's always really exciting when I go somewhere, and I see like stormwater practices happening, so that's what I was looking up when you were chatting earlier because I just went to a place and I couldn't remember the name of it, I wanted to get it right. But I went to the Audubon Center at Riverlands Oh, yeah. In the Mississippi Flyway . Yeah.

Amy Lefringhouse: 38:19

Yes. Represent.

Erin Garrett: 38:21

And loved getting there and just seeing, like, permeable pavement and just the way that they've structured their building to capture rainwater and they had some rain gardens and it was just really exciting to kind of see that example in real life. Right? It's always fun for me to see. So I know you have lots of examples. Can you share one or two projects?

Eliana Brown: 38:42

The one I wanna highlight is is the Uptown Normal Circle, and this project this project is amazing. It is they took this large intersection, and it was part of their whole revitalization of of their their uptown area. They made a roundabout, so long gone as traffic thing, and and it has this water feature, It has concrete base, and it utilizes storm water captured from two streets. They filter it through some rain gardens, and just look like garden beds. And instead of using potable water, they have they they use the storm water for this kind of, like, shallow.

Eliana Brown: 39:25

It's almost like a little like a little like a like a a kind of like a a concrete creek bed that's really, really beautiful. It's the circle, so it's called the circle. It's really popular in the win excuse me, in the summer months when people need to cool off. People can actually get in that water, and that's what is lovely about it. Like I said, it's it's clean storm water.

Eliana Brown: 39:47

Kids will play in it. People sit in the grass next to it. It's right on the ISU campus, so college students will will use it for recreation. I guess they have it's like, you know, stormwater management plus. They have bands that play basically utilizing it as a park, which is really great.

Eliana Brown: 40:06

And most people don't even know that it's storm water management. But I wanna if if someone's traveling around and they're like, you know, in any of these areas, I wanna give people a clue to know whether something is stormwater management or not. And, like, if you have so if you have curbs here around a a native plant bed and those curbs have cuts in them, probably stormwater management. So some that's one of the ways that the stormwater is getting in. The other like, some of the numbers I wanna put around this particular example is that it's taking it's taking 1,400,000 gallons of stormwater, and they're using that because they're using that, they're not using potable water, and so it saves the city $7,600 annually, which is which is really great.

Eliana Brown: 40:57

But even more than that, as part of that revitalization of that area, it's generating nearly $700,000 of revenue through conferences that are held in normal. So it's like it has these practices cost things, right? But as we talked about, GIGO and some of the other grant programs can be really helpful, and they can be nice things for helping to revitalize and generate some revenue for communities. That's one of my favorite ones. Mhmm.

Eliana Brown: 41:34

I just yeah. I I think it's a great project.

Amy Lefringhouse: 41:36

Well, and I think it's really cool because it's in the middle to where people are, like you said, interacting with it a lot traffic wise, then also pedestrian, and people can see good example and be inspired and hopefully start to come you know, continue starting to continue the conversation about what's happening there. Right? Like, what's its function?

Eliana Brown: 41:55

Yeah. Some projects like this one, folks, I know don't I don't know that everybody knows that it's stormwater management, but those that do really are like, wow. This is really super cool. There have been some projects where stormwater management has been really studied, and a lot of people know about it, and that's one of my second examples. There's a I wanted to bring one from different parts of parts of Illinois and different kinds of green stormwater infrastructure.

Eliana Brown: 42:22

There's a and then I call, like, the classic the classic experiment, and that was city of Chicago city hall. So they had a green route, and this was, like, twenty years ago. Mayor Daley at the time wanted to make Chicago One of the green roof exam or, like, places best places in the world. So they on the building, he wanted to have the whole building's roof be turned into a green roof, But the city only had half the building, and the county had the other half the building. And the county said, we don't think so.

Eliana Brown: 42:54

So you got the like, for, like, you know, academic nerds here are like, oh my gosh. That's it's a classic experiment. And they have been able a lot of research, a lot of studies have been done showing the differences between the two sides, and that's kind of exciting. So I mentioned a little bit before that green roofs also have that energy savings benefit. So the green roof side, the research has shown that it saves approximately $5,000 per year in utility bills.

Eliana Brown: 43:26

Mhmm. And that's because on average, that side of the building is 10 to 20 degrees cooler than the side that doesn't have the green roof, which is really important for our our big cities with urban heat islands. Yeah. My last example, my third example, is from from my hometown in Southern Illinois, and and I found this one when I was visiting. I was visiting my mom for the holidays, and I just kind of like, you know, you know, you gotta, like, when you're at your hometown, you gotta, like, drive around and see the new things in the hometown.

Eliana Brown: 44:03

Right? So I was driving past the the town's hospital, and I I looked, and I just look. I kinda looked, and I looked again. Lucky okay. It's a small town.

Eliana Brown: 44:14

Like and it was a real it was a side street, so I could actually stop in the middle of the road and, like, back up. Only something you can do in a in a small town. We're due now. And I was like, it's a bioswale . It turns out, again, small town.

Eliana Brown: 44:28

My brother went to high school with the with the administrator of the hospital, so I'm, like, asking him questions. I'm like, why why? What happened? How did this happen? And so they they expanded the parking lot, the hospital and the hospital parking lot, and when that happened, they started flooding the guy's house down the street. And so I'm like, know, okay.

Eliana Brown: 44:50

We're gonna do the right thing. So they put in this bioswale that takes up all the storm water coming storm water runoff coming from from the hospital parking lot. And and I kinda love that one because that one was not driven by regulation. It was driven by, like, hey. We're just gonna, like, Yeah.

Eliana Brown: 45:05

Really? The heck that's happening here. I'm gonna do the right thing. Mhmm. And and they and they did it, and now and now they have this great example of green stormwater infrastructure.

Erin Garrett: 45:16

That's awesome. I love all of those examples. That's fantastic. And I like how you picked places across Illinois, which is my favorite, to kinda take the different things that can happen.

Eliana Brown: 45:26

Well, it it's it's for everywhere, and there's there's certain things that small towns can be more nimble and be able to do that large town, large cities can't do. There's Really? Like, this is this is something for every every part of Illinois if that community wants to do it. Mhmm.

Erin Garrett: 45:44

Alright. Well, thank you so much, Eliana, for sharing all of your wonderful knowledge about green infrastructure and stormwater management. We're going to shift into our everyday observation, so this is the part of the show where we highlight kind of the mundane and normal of our environment that is actually really interesting, at least to us, we hope it's interesting to everyone that's listening too, and inspires you to think about what you see in your everyday, environment. But Amy, I'm gonna pick on you first.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:13

Sure. I would love to share. So I drive out my driveway down this little street. I'm kind of in a older neighborhood of Quincy is where I live, and there's two giant bur oak trees down this street, this little kind of like, it's almost like an alley. And they have been around for a long time.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:36

I mean, these were not planted by us. Right? They were there, and they're probably at they're at least 48 inches diameter. I looked up the Big Tree Registry, which is an Illinois Extension program, just just a plug for everybody there. Burr Oak, big tree record is like 89 inches, so not even close to that, but these are big these are pretty big trees.

Amy Lefringhouse: 46:59

Anyway, one day I'm driving just the other day to work, look up, it has a huge lightning scar that, like, it must have been hit because it's one of the taller trees obviously in the neighborhood, and comes all the way down and kind of like diagonally crisscrosses the tree down to the ground, and part of me is sad, a little bit sad, but also like, what a, I don't know, awesome, I almost said a swear word, but what an awesome tree to be able to, you know, take that and just be like, Here I am. I'm still going. I'm still, I'm still living and doing all the work that I'm doing here as a tree in the middle of the city. So I can't say that it's a positive everyday observation, but it was really like, wow, a neat thing to see.

Erin Garrett: 47:50

A battle scar.

Amy Lefringhouse: 47:51

Yeah. A battle scar.

Erin Garrett: 47:52

Absolutely. That's great. Thanks, Amy. Mhmm. Alright, Eliana.

Erin Garrett: 47:57

What's your everyday observation?

Eliana Brown: 47:59

Alright. So I couldn't I couldn't pick this one. I have two. I know this is gonna air in the spring, and so with storm water, we talk about leaves quite a bit. And I I always encourage people to make sure that they that they don't have leaves that are going into the storm or on the street because that can contribute to storm water pollution.

Eliana Brown: 48:22

But that's what I do in my front yard. Like, put those into my compost pile, but my backyard gets to stay with leaves. And so what I get to enjoy and what I look forward to in spring and summer, summer especially, is a lot a lightning bug show, fireflies everywhere. It is truly spectacular and just such a joy to get to see that. My first one, stormwater related.

Eliana Brown: 48:51

The second one is my my my springtime joy. My absolute favorite place in the world is Allerton in the world is Allerton Park in the springtime with their bluebells. It is something spectacular. So that is Allerton Park in Monticello. They have a very wooded area, and I'm sure all across Illinois you can go to whatever is your your favorite nature preserve.

Eliana Brown: 49:21

If they have bluebells and wildflowers, it's something really to never to miss, always to behold. And as we think about looking at, say you know I'm gonna talk about green storm water infrastructure one more time. As we walk out a hike, it's a really important thing to go out in nature and see the the kind of landscapes that you find beautiful because those are the kinds of things that can really inspire, say, like, what kind of native plants that you wanna incorporate into your own yard or what kind of native plants you wanna have in in your rain garden. The allerton park bluebells inspired the bluebells that are at the Red Oak Rain Garden, and they're just my ultimate joy.

Erin Garrett: 50:03

I love that. I just planted some bluebells in my garden this fall so that I have the did that at my last house too, and those are some that I didn't transplant with me because listeners may not know that I brought a lot of plants with me to my new house, but I couldn't bring everything, so I had to get some more bluebells to put in. So I'm hoping that they do well, and they come up and bloom this year.

Eliana Brown: 50:26

But How do you know it's really spring? Like, and the bluebells start coming up, it's like, oh, we made it. We made it. Mhmm.

Erin Garrett: 50:33

Definitely. Alright. Well, I'll wrap us up today, and, you know, we're recording in December. So for us, December is what my husband calls the mud season. That's winter for us.

Erin Garrett: 50:45

In Southern Illinois, we get a lot of rain, not that much snow, and so we just had a really big rain event. Yesterday, we got about 1.7 inches of rain here at my office, and it's interesting driving to work because I know the spots where there's going to be flooding, and so driving here, you know, there's a really low spot where it goes under a railway overpass, and it was definitely flooded yesterday, and then just watching all of the ditches and how high all the water was, and then just flooding in yards too. So just kind of got that tangible view of where all of that rain has to go. Right? It has to go somewhere, and you know, six hours later when I left, it was basically all the water and the road was gone.

Erin Garrett: 51:39

So then I was thinking like, where did it all go? It's just interesting to kind of think about, you know, we have this this temporary problem. Right? This temporary flooding, and then it's resolved, but I don't fully understand where it's all going. So just kind of made the wheels turn in my brain to kind of think about it more, but it is a lot more tangible for me now in kind of the rural settings, I'm like, I know what roads are going to be flooded and what I need to avoid on those certain days, so I just thought it was kind of relevant to our discussion today.

Erin Garrett: 52:07

Yeah. Yeah. So

Eliana Brown: 52:08

Absolutely. And there's a in rural areas with the ditches where you can really see it, there's some I think that there's it it helps you to really visualize what's happens much more than in more urban areas when you think it's underground.

Amy Lefringhouse: 52:24

That makes sense.

Eliana Brown: 52:24

so yes, I appreciate series of ditches.

Erin Garrett: 52:27

And just how much water. Right? How water comes in in, like, a torrential downpour, which is what we had yesterday. It was a fun day. Alright.

Erin Garrett: 52:36

Thank you so much, Eliana, again, sharing your knowledge with us and all of our listeners. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the pod. It's been a joy.

Eliana Brown: 52:44

Oh, well, thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been such a pleasure speaking with you both. This is a great series.

Erin Garrett: 52:50

Thank you. Well, this has been another episode on the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Katie O'Reilly about aquatic invasive species.