Located on a hilly property, with lots of sidewalks, driveways, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda has a serious stormwater run-off problem. Thanks to a $29,000 grant from Clean Water Montgomery, they now have a plan to deal with the excess water using green techniques. Eight spots were identified that would benefit from conservation landscaping, rain gardens, cisterns, and other green techniques that would allow the water to soak in the ground, instead of running off the property causing erosion to the campus and flooding in the local creek. The church is very excited to get started on executing the plan.

Community Outreach

The grant also allowed for three community outreach projects to educate the Church members and neighbors on the importance of capturing storm water on site so it can soak into the ground instead of letting it run off into the street where it goes directly to the local creek.

Little Falls Watershed Alliance gave a well attended presentation on the joys of stormwater management and what the church and homeowners can do on their property to contain the rain water. They discussed the pros and cons of different green techniques including rain gardens, conservation landscaping, permeable pavers, dry wells, french drains, and cisterns. Information about the Montgomery County Rainscapes program was distributed.

The second community event was a native plant sale. The Church environment committee ordered 500 native plants and opened the sale to the public as well as Church members. Despite the rainy day, the plants sold out in 30 minutes! LFWA had information on conservation landscaping and the RainScape Program.

For the last outreach project, we went to the creek to see the effect of too much stormwater on the habitat. Campers from the Church camp and volunteers did an assessment of the benthic macroinvertebrates who depend on the creek for their lives. After finding that the creek was in poor health, we had a discussion on how too much water after it rains was destroying the creek and how we could mitigate the problem by keeping the storm water out of the streets after it rains.