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Stormwater Success: Environmental Alliance gets tour of constructed wetland

Education, Sound Rivers, Stormwater, Stormwater Issues, Stormwater Restoration Projects, Stormwater Runoff

Posted on October 7th, 2021

Environmental Projects Coordinator Clay Barber illustrates the anatomy of constructed wetland.

This week, Sound Rivers’ Environmental Projects Coordinator Clay Barber was out in the field… and in the classroom.

Clay was invited to speak to Environmental Alliance, a student conservation group at Beaufort County Community College. His talk center around constructed wetlands: Sound Rivers and BCCC partnered to build a constructed wetland on the Washington campus, courtesy of a state Environmental Enhancement Grant.

Clay walked students through the anatomy of a constructed wetland, explaining how their built to capture as much water as possible, and filter that water before it makes its way into local waterways. Environmental Alliance members were then given a tour of the constructed wetland, located adjacent to Building 8, to see the wetland in action.

The BCCC wetland is a small .2 acres that drains 18 campus acres and can store and filter 140,000 gallons of water.

Native grasses not only shore up the banks of the constructed wetland in place, but they filter the water that drains from 18 campus acres.

The native wetland plants are real; the alligator is not.

Students got to see the wetland in action after learning exactly what goes in to constructing one.

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