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West Craven High School got a step closer to a rainwater-fed greenhouse this week.

Sound Rivers Program Director Clay Barber was at the Vanceboro school on Wednesday, putting the final pieces in place for the rainwater harvesting cistern installed earlier this year.

“I hooked up the tank to the building so that it can receive water,” Clay said. “I also cut the gutter and installed a leaf filter, then ran some pipe into the tank and another pipe outside of the tank for overflow so when the tank fills up, the overflow will go into lawn/garden area.”

The greenhouse is home to plants grown for West Craven High School’s annual plant sale, a fundraiser for the school.

“Hopefully, we’ll have it knocked out in a couple of weeks and the students will be able to use it when they come back to class,” Clay said.

Clay is working with William Shaw, WCHS’ Future Farmers of America advisor and agricultural educator, on the project, but this week, he was on his own.

“It was my first time hooking up a tank like that solo. There were quite a few things I dropped from the top of the ladder, so it took me a bit longer than it usually would,” he laughed.

The project is part of Sound Rivers’ Campus Stormwater Program and partly funded by a $5,000 grant from the Harold Bate Foundation. Clay said Shaw’s support of the program has been instrumental.

“Mr. Shaw is just incredibly easy to work with and really goes out of his way to help and gets the students involved when I come to visit,” Clay said. “I would say he probably puts these projects to use more than any other participant of our Campus Stormwater Program, and that means we make progress — it just makes grant projects take shape much faster.”

The next step to get the greenhouse plants watered via the rainwater harvester is to install a pump in the cistern, which should happen in the next few weeks. He said he hopes to do a similar project at West Craven Middle School in the future.