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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Environment - Fort Wayne creates wetland to combat combined sewer overflows

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports today on the dedication of a swamp. Some quotes:

Mayor Graham Richard dedicated a swamp Monday, capping the end of a two-year, $20 million project to prevent sewage from flooding basements around McMillen Park.

The Camp Scott wetlands may be a swamp, with the usual collection of cattails, frogs and muck, but they are also a stormwater filtration system, naturally cleaning the water of contaminants it collects as it runs to city storm sewers. * * *

The Camp Scott project includes a massive, 2.2 million-gallon underground storage tank that was built underneath McMillen Park to hold stormwater during heavy rains. Pumps then send the water through 4-foot diameter pipes to Camp Scott, where officials took an existing marsh on the former World War II prisoner-of-war camp and enhanced it to handle the stormwater from a 350-acre urban area.

After the wetlands were built, they were filled with plants specifically chosen to clean the water. Federal rules now require stormwater to be clean before it is released, as it can pick up oil from streets and driveways, chemicals from lawns and other contaminants. Officials are still working to complete the sewer separations in McMillen Park neighborhoods.

The Indiana Association of Cities and Towns selected the Camp Scott project for its Community Achievement Award, which was presented Monday.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette also carries a companion editorial today that begins:
The city’s Camp Scott project is the antithesis of Rube Goldberg engineering. Instead of a complicated mechanism requiring maximum effort to achieve minimal results, Camp Scott is a relatively simple system that does several beneficial things. With a single project, city leaders were able to solve multiple problems and win a couple of awards as well.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 28, 2005 07:38 AM
Posted to Environment