This summer has brought us an abundance of heavy rain falls. While it’s beautiful to witness our gardens flourishing and wonderful to decrease our time with the gardening hose, unfortunately these frequent intense rain falls can cause damage to our homes, our neighborhoods, and our watershed.
What is going on?
As our cities evolve and expand, natural ecosystems are lost and replaced with hardened surfaces such as concrete and asphalt. What was once a biodiverse environment is now grass lawn, roadways, metal roofs, and parking lots. Unfortunately these hardened surfaces are non-permeable, meaning that rain water is unable to absorb into the earth, and is instead directed into nearby storm drains. This run off collects any toxins along the way including chemicals, oil, fertilizers, pesticides, and debris, which then pollutes our larger watershed. During heavy rainfall events, our stormwater infrastructure becomes overwhelmed, which can cause flooding.
This sounds overwhelming. What can I do to help?
Despite many things being out of our control, like weather patterns and infrastructure, there are some things you can do to increase your stormwater management. Read below!
- Install low impact developments (LID) project on your property. Rain gardens and bioswales are two great LIDs that you can add to your home. These beautiful green infrastructure initiatives capture, slow, absorb and filter rainwater. They deliver this water back into the soil for native plants and surrounding root systems to absorb. These plants are able to filter and slow the water, which eliminates pollutants entering our water systems. These LIDs build climate resilience by decreasing the flooding, erosion, and our clogged storm drains. Additionally by installing a rain garden, bioswale, or adding a rain tank, rain water harvesting system, or another LID, water is directed away from your house foundation, which decreases the likelihood of basement flooding.
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Look into naturalization practices. Transforming your property from a cultivated landscape into a natural landscape full of native plants and biodiversity, will mimic naturally occurring ecosystems. By eliminating the amount of sod and other non-permeable surfaces on your property, rain water is able to absorb into your plant systems, your naturalized yard, and the healthy soil. This decreases the pooling, flooding, and run off of water. Not to mention all the other amazing benefits that come with naturalized areas!!
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Continue to educate yourself on these practices. Check out Upper Thames River Conservation Authority for some great tools and resources. Stay informed.
- Speak to your community and your local city councillors about the importance of stormwater management. Advocate for and promote more naturalized spaces in our neighborhoods and city. Stay involved with local initiatives.
- Keep updated on local initiatives, low impact developments and when our 2025 Residential Rain Garden Program will open by signing up for our newsletter.
Even though these intense rain falls may seem overwhelming, there are many things we can do to increase our stormwater management. Let's all help to protect our homes, our strong communities, and abundant environment.
See photo below a local bioswale in action! This vegetated bioswale has collected roof water after a heavy storm, and is absorbing it into the the root systems of native plants and trees.
This photo below is local rain garden from our Residential Rain Garden Program.
Warmly,
Joanna MacLeod
Sustainability Coordinator
The London Environmental Network
