Kansas City

“10,000 Rain Gardens” is an effort by Kansas City (USA) to encourage citizens to minimize stormwater runoff and improve water quality by capturing and filtering rain water in rain gardens.  The five-year goal of 10,000 Rain Gardens is, literally, the development of 10,000 rain gardens in back yards and on any other public and private property. Black & Veatch is the prime contractor for Kansas City's Comprehensive City-Wide Stormwater Management Plan, called KC-One.

Kansas City is plagued by the same sewer and storm water problems as many other cities having older systems, and faces the same staggering rebuilding costs in its efforts to comply with Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The city has set out to mitigate the problems to the extent possible by mobilizing the entire community in a voluntary effort to attack a major water pollution problem at its source.

Efforts were made to publicise this project through the media and a survey of residents following the six-week kick-off campaign found that 43 percent of citizens correctly identified stormwater as the number one source of non-point source pollution of area streams and rivers. This was a double-digit increase in awareness of the problem compared to results 6 months earlier.

Training for professionals has been another successful component of the initiative. Three full-day sessions ($50 per participant) sold out and became standing-room-only events for 200 landscapers, municipal employees, retailers, and others.

Peter Martin from B&V in Redhill has visited the project and considers it to be an excellent example of what can be achieved through raising public awareness and by promoting community participation to help overcome a drainage problem in a local and sustainable manner. The sprawling suburbs of Kansas City are filled with concrete, mown grass, bushes and trees – but hardly any of the cultivated areas found in the parks, gardens and allotments of a UK townscape.

Clearly the overall space available on a typical US backyard is different to the UK, but the actual size of the rain garden itself can be fairly modest and would fit on many UK plots. In the past,  community participation in the UK would have seemed a major hurdle, but increasing public awareness of environmental issues and willingness to act (as witnessed by the response to last year’s drought) provides a sign of hope. The big question is … what will our native species be in 20 years time?