Bayfield residents can now get funding to help cover the costs of creating a rain garden.
Ausable Bayield Conservation Authority Healthy Watersheds Technician explains rain gardens are helpful in reducing flooding and erosion by collecting storm water and they also improve water quality by filtering out pollutants before water flows through the garden. Brock says they had worked in the past with rural residents about how they could reduce erosion and flooding and improve water quality so they started looking at what they could do in urban centres and Bayfield was a natural choice, because they had already been working with Bayfield residents on their watershed plan.
Brock says Bayfield residents who put in a rain garden can apply to the conservation authority for fifty per cent of their costs to a maximum of 500 dollars. She adds the program is only available in Bayfield at this time but they are looking at other communities.
“They collect storm water so it's not running off so you see a decrease in flooding, a decrease in erosion and as it holds this water the plant roots and the soil in the rain garden help to filter the water.”
“So with that we looked at what we could do and in partnership with the municipality of Bluewater, we were able to provide some funding for this through the Blue Flag Initiative as well as the Huron Clean Water Project.”
