MT. PLEASANT, Wis. — Once farmland, the Meachem Preserve in Racine County is being used as a site to innovate stormwater management.
The Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network (WIN) and KCI Technologies are partnering together to re-engineer the existing stormwater pond and build a what they call, “Pond 2.0.”
“With simple tweaks to the design, it can improve our water quality, and our habitat and be more of an asset to the community,” said Kristi Heuser with the Root-Pike WIN.
Heuser said the goal is to design a pond that better mimics nature.
“As it is right now, stormwater ponds are really designed to take out sediment that comes into them, but this will help with sediment, phosphorus, E. coli and these other pollutants that we don’t often manage in our stormwater ponds,” said Heuser
KCI Technologies helped redevelop the farmland into a wetland. Jordy Jordahl is the company’s natural resource program lead.
He said the way that “Pond 2.0” will work is that there will be three different levels of depth.
The shallower side from the north is six inches deep. It will be used to capture the sediment that initially comes into the pond.
If the rain is heavier, the water will go into a low and a high marsh that allows the excess water to be treated for pollutants by native plants. After that, it will flow into a nearby wetland.
“The most important treatment in a stormwater event is the first half inch of rain and this system is going to be designed to deal with those half inches of rain, one inch of rain because that’s where the pollution initially comes out and so the system is going to be built, specifically to treat the pollutants,” said Jordahl.
Heuser said every stormwater pond is an opportunity to improve our quality of life.
“We just often forget about them and realize how important they are, but they are a stopover point for the water,” said Heuser. “Pollutants are taken out and they eventually discharge to your nearest river, in this case the Pike River, which ends up in Lake Michigan.”
The Fund for Lake Michigan awarded a $28,000 grant to Root-Pike WIN for the project.
