Lagunitas School Organic Garden
In 2003, SPAWN was funded through a Clean Water Act grant to develop citizen water-quality monitoring and nonpoint source pollution awareness outreach, and to implement an on-the-ground project to address nonpoint source pollution.
The Lagunitas School Organic Garden project was one outcome of this grant.
The model project was designed to capture rainfall from the roof of a 1,600 square foot playground-lunch shelter, and divert it away from a stormdrain and into a cistern during the stormy winter months. The project serves to irrigate the school's Organic Garden Project during the dry summer period, a program in which all students participate throughout the school year.
The Lagunitas School Organic Garden project was one outcome of this grant.
The model project was designed to capture rainfall from the roof of a 1,600 square foot playground-lunch shelter, and divert it away from a stormdrain and into a cistern during the stormy winter months. The project serves to irrigate the school's Organic Garden Project during the dry summer period, a program in which all students participate throughout the school year.
The first step was to install a new polycarbonate roof for the shelter. The slanted roof leads to a rain gutter where two downspouts collect water into one pipe that flows to a new "Pioneer Galaxy" 30,000 gallon cistern adjacent to the school garden. In an average year, the roof drains 35,000 gallons of water. The additional 5,000 gallons of water are diverted through an overflow pipe into a nearby rain garden (a vegetated swale) where it is allowed to filter into the groundwater table. Left uncaptured, the roof's runoff would have drained onto a concrete pad and into a ten inch storm drain that empties out onto an already eroded bank on Larsen Creek, a salmon-bearing creek that flows into San Geronimo Creek, one of the major tributaries to Lagunitas Creek. Although small in size, in most years, Larsen Creek is home to more coho salmon spawners than the entire Russian River basin!
Since the project was completed, it has received local press coverage and garnered widespread community interest and serves as a demonstration project in creek care, sustainable water use and stormwater runoff mitigation. Hundreds of visitors tour the project each year.
Since the project was completed, it has received local press coverage and garnered widespread community interest and serves as a demonstration project in creek care, sustainable water use and stormwater runoff mitigation. Hundreds of visitors tour the project each year.
