Students help with rain garden plantings
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Courtesy photo / About 30 fourth-graders from Holy Trinity Elementary School's Altoona site helped a couple of teachers and employees from the Blair County Conservation District and Stiffler McGraw engineering on Friday to populate a recently constructed rain garden nearby with plants.
He came to the principal's office in his socks, with dirt stains on the knees of his dungarees and soil under his fingernails.
Anthony Kowalski, who was summoned to the office for an interview, was one of 30 fourth-graders from Holy Trinity Elementary School's Altoona site who helped a couple of teachers and employees from the Blair County Conservation District and Stiffler McGraw engineering on Friday to populate a recently constructed rain garden nearby with plants.
There were 500 plantings altogether, said Chelsey Ergler, stormwater coordinator for the district, which provides staff to help the Intergovernmental Stormwater Committee fulfill increasingly stringent requirements for preventing stormwater contaminants from entering area streams through projects like the rain garden.
The students used shovels for several trees and for larger plants and their hands for smaller seedlings, said Cathy Damiano, vice principal in charge of the Altoona school site, which was formerly St. Therese Elementary School.
The native plants put into the ground Friday will help stabilize the slopes of the rain garden and slow the flow of water through it, so more percolates down to become groundwater and so the water that flows into the storm sewer system beyond is cleaner.
Chris Foster of Stiffler McGraw showed all the students what to do, the principal said.
"It was really cool," said Anthony, 9.
Anthony especially liked digging in the soft soil with his hands to set the smaller plants.
"I like to get messy," he said.
He set more than 20 plants, Damiano said.
It helped that a couple of weeks ago, he assisted his brother in digging and clearing brush on their property, Anthony said.
All the kids worked steadily, without taking a break, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m., Damiano said.
Rain during that time didn't slow them down, she said.
The kids learned about the function of the rain garden as part of the project, according to Ergler.
A grant obtained by the district from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation paid for Stiffler McGraw's services, according to Ergler.
The city supervised the earlier construction of the rain garden, which is in a triangular traffic island at Fourth Street and 25th Avenue, according to Ergler.
Another rain garden is slated to be built across Fourth Street from the one planted on Friday, near a sign for the school.