How clean is rain water?

That depends a great deal on what happens to it once it hits the ground. If it falls on a city street or on a chemically treated lawn, for example, it's apt to pick up a number of pollutants as it meanders toward local streams and lakes.

An effort to clean some of that water has received a grant of $7,500 from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The money will go to installing rain gardens at Ada Hayden Heritage Park and in front of the Ames Water Treatment Plant.

Prairie Rivers of Iowa Resource Conservation and Development and the city of Ames are working together on the project. Dave Perry of the DNR presented the check to the two groups on Tuesday.

The rain gardens will filter both the rain water that falls on the garden as well as the runoff from nearby buildings, which will be diverted into the gardens. They will feature native plants, which have deep roots that give them the ability to filter a great deal more pollutants than shallow-rooted plants such as lawn grass, according to Tracy Warner, Ames municipal engineer.

The rain gardens also will serve an educational role. Prairie Rivers has been actively promoting rain gardens for some time, and many people who first hear about them want to know what they look like before they would consider installing them in their yards, Warner said.

"This will give the public some visible examples they can learn from," she said.

The location of the rain garden near the water plant also ensures that many local schoolchildren will see it.

"Children coming to the water treatment plant on tours will have this as their first stop," said Christina Murphy, Ames assistant director of water and pollution control.

Jane Halliburton, who was representing her role at Prairie Rivers instead of her job as Story County supervisor at the check presentation Tuesday, said this is a great example of how many parties can be brought together to work on something for the benefit of the community.

"There are so many things we can do that don't have to be huge in scale or very costly, but can be substantial in benefit," Halliburton said.

The DNR is presenting water quality improvement grants to a number of other organizations in June, including $5,465 to two Iowa State University landscape architecture students, Angie Young and Jason Grimm, who have been working with residents on Emerson Drive to install rain gardens in that neighborhood. The goal of that project is to improve the water quality of College Creek. Several rain gardens already are in place there.

Work on the rain gardens at Ada Hayden and the water plant is expected to begin in August.

Heidi Marttila-Losure can be reached at 232-2161, Ext. 352,
or hlosure@amestrib.com.