The City will begin constructing its first Rain Garden this spring on Clinton Street in order to help filter out water and trash from the Mill Creek waterway.
The project comes from a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is administered by the Charles River Watershed Council, according to City Manager Jay Ash.
The project cost and the total grant funds are $133,220.
“It’s expensive and we’ll be interested in seeing the results,” said Ash. “I’m not sure because of the expense that we’ll be able to do lots of them. The EPA has helped us to get this one done.”
Rain Gardens are depressions or holes in the ground that host native plants and flowers in order to cut down on pollution and runoff water going into nearby bodies of water. In this case, the body of water is Mill Creek. It is estimated that about 30 percent of polluted water can be prevented from running into a nearby body of water by plants and soil absorbing the water before it gets there.