Down the Drain

The package was here, mid-April, when I got back from a business trip. It was from Julie Todd in the City of Atlanta's Department of Watershed Management and in it there were three large, sturdy plastic stencils, with "NO DUMPING" across the top, "DRAINS TO STREAM" across the bottom, and an outline drawing of a fish in the middle. Different cities mark storm drains in different ways, but the problem is the same everywhere -- anything dumped in the street that "washes away" with the rain ends up in storm water which goes down a storm drain and ends up, untreated, in surface water, somewhere.

Many of the houses on Wessyngton Road have green space behind them. That green space is there not because early developers of the neighborhood loved trees so much, but because the trees are growing in ditches and ravines that carry runoff away when it rains. There aren't permanent creeks at the bottom of the ravines, necessarily, but the water flows downhill and then feeds into creeks that feed into larger streams that eventually feed into something that feeds into the Chattahoochee River. Storm water from this end of Wessyngton flows downhill to Cumberland, where 5 storm drains take it to a creek that carries it to underground storm drainage that ends up as the creek in the Nature Trail, just past Sunken Garden Park. From there it goes to the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, along Lenox Road, and then to the Chattahoochee River.

So a couple of weeks ago Iain and I went out on a Sunday morning with stencils and spray paint to mark the storm drains on Wessyngton Road. ("Does the city know you're doing this?" Tom asked, I think envisioning having to come bail me out of jail. "That's who sent me the stencils," I told him, "so I think it's okay.") We used way too much paint on the first one, but after that they looked great. Here's an example:



We labelled all five of the storm drains at Cumberland and Wessyngton, and one of the ones on Wessyngton up the street toward Highland; we couldn't get the other one because a car was parked close to it and we were afraid we'd get paint on it. (Speaking of which -- I had no idea that one has to show an ID to purchase spray paint at Home Depot. I apparently did not look like a vandal, and the clerk waved off my offer to show her my drivers' license when prompted to do so at self-service checkout.) After that, there's the rest of the neighborhood to go.

I was in Idaho last week, and although work kept me busy most of the time I was there, I did get out briefly a couple of times to explore a little. And I was delighted to look down and see this in Boise, Idaho:



I've seen signs on storm drains in Boston and in Baltimore too. So here's another item that can be added to that master index that captures Things That Matter about Quality of Life - does someone care enough to remind other people about storm water, and that nothing really "washes away," it just goes downstream?

Here in Morningside, Iain and I will do our part.

Downstream from Somewhere

A couple of years ago, Iain and I walked the Nature Trail that begins across Plymouth Road from Sunken Garden Park.  The trail goes along a stream that seems to appear out of nowhere from underneath Plymouth Road.  We decided we wanted to see where the water ended up, so we followed the stream as it  continued north-northeast through greenspace into Lenox-Wildwood Park.  We continued to follow it along Lenox Road until it joined the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, near Lenox Road.

There's another stream that seems to come from nowhere, on the other side of Cumberland Road, where Wessyngton Road ends.  Google Maps shows it starting on the Wessyngton Road side of Cumberland, heading northeast toward the intersection of East Rock Springs and Sussex, and then running alongside Sunken Garden Park before appearing at the Nature Trail -- the same stream that Iain and I followed several years ago.  Now I know that Google Maps is not necessarily the definitive word on geography, but I haven't seen a stream on this side of Cumberland.  What I have seen are five storm drains at the intersection of Wessyngton Road and Cumberland Road, one on each side of Wessyngton, at the intersection, and three along the curb across the street.  The storm drains must empty into the creek that we can see from Cumberland Road.  I don't know where it disappears into below ground storm sewers as it makes its way toward East Rock Springs, but I know it's not visible at the end of the Haygood parking lot, near East Rock Springs, or in Sunken Garden Park.  It only emerges above ground again on the other side of Plymouth Road, along the Nature Trail.

Whether the map is exactly right or not, I am pretty sure that the runoff from Wessyngton Road does end up in the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, and I had never thought about that until I saw that thin blue line on the map.  When we've had construction on the street, there's been inches of silt at those three storm drains on Cumberland.  There's the oil that's leaked from cars and the leaves that we didn't rake.  It ends up in Peachtree Creek, and then the Chattahoochee River.

In Baltimore and Boston I've seen signs on storm drains, reminding people that what they dump in the street ends up in the bay (brass signs, set into the street, or stenciled onto the pavement) but I have never seen any signage here that indicated that what goes down storm drains end up in the rivers.  So I was surprised to learn last week that Fulton County has storm drain signage they make available to volunteers to mark storm drains in their neighborhoods -- "Keep it clean -- Drains to River."

I emailed Sharon Smith at Fulton County Public Works, asking if the City of Atlanta participated in the program, and she referred me to Julie Todd, Environmental Compliance Manager for the City of Atlanta.  So then I emailed Julie, who responded quickly and told me that the city has stencils for marking storm drains.  She's mailing me some.

When we get the stencils, Iain and I will be out there, with a couple of orange traffic cones and a can of spray paint.  There's only so much water, and we're all downstream from somewhere.