By Kate Elizabeth Queram
Downtown Wilmington, N.C., is now home to two street-side rain gardens, designed to capture and filter polluted stormwater runoff before it sloshes into Burnt Mill Creek.
The gardens, known as street retrofits, are the first of their kind in the state, transforming existing structures on urban roadways into environmentally friendly patches of greenery, said Christy Perrin, a program manager with N.C. State University, which partnered with city officials to design and complete the project.
"This was somewhat experimental in nature, in that we've not done street rain gardens before," she said. "It's starting to happen in other places, but I think this project was the first to try it in North Carolina."
Construction of the gardens, funded by a $224,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, started more than two years ago. Officials began the first, located at the intersection of 12th and Dock streets, in January 2011, following reports of flooding from residents in the area.
"We worked with the different departments in the city to determine the best locations," Perrin said. "Originally, Dock Street was chosen because there was some street flooding occurring that people were complaining about, so this was one way to help reduce that."
The garden, which juts slightly into the street, has also helped slow traffic on Dock Street.
"The ones on Dock Street are bump-out rain gardens, so they narrow the street a little bit and that tends to slow traffic down," Perrin said. "They were intended to serve multiple purposes of slowing traffic and reducing stormwater runoff."
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