Lisa Stiffler
Lisa Stiffler is a journalism fellow for Sightline. Before joining Sightline, Lisa was a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for 10 years, most of them spent covering environmental issues. She did investigations on the health of Puget Sound, the national failure to protect endangered species, and the multi-billion dollar Hanford cleanup. A Northwest native, she earned degrees in cell biology and communications from the University of Washington. In addition to knowing more than she ever meant to about fruit flies, Lisa conducts forest restoration at Seattle’s Carkeek Park, grows veggies and likes having her husband cook dinner for friends. Email her at lisa [at] sightline [dot] org.
SwatchJunkies
SwatchJunkies
New Fund Will Help More Seattle Residents Build Rain Gardens
Seattle’s RainWise rain garden program is spreading green stormwater solutions across the city, but the rebate program has been out of reach for some homeowners with more modest incomes. While RainWise offers generous reimbursements---$4,600 on average for the installation of rain gardens and cisterns---the homeowner has to pay for the work upfront, then wait up to two months for the program to pay them back. It’s an expense that not everyone can shoulder.
A new financial program called the Green Infrastructure Rebate Advance Fund (GIRAF) should remove that hurdle by bridging the payment gap. A separate access fund will also provide small grants to partially pay for projects near the Duwamish River that cost more than the city’s rebate.
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Advice on Rain Barrel Watering Now As a Pamphlet!
Thanks to all of the interest in our post “A Green Light for Using Rain Barrel Water on Garden Edibles” ...
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Rain Gardens Could Make Runoff Safe for Salmon
Editor’s note: Planning on installing a rain garden this year? This popular article from last winter should give you that ...
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A Green Light for Using Rain Barrel Water on Garden Edibles
Is it safe to use rain barrel water collected from your roof to irrigate homegrown lettuces, strawberries, and tomatoes? The ...
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Which Way to Clean Industrial Stormwater?
Industrial companies—metal recyclers, printing plants, rail yards, petroleum refineries, and the like—have a smaller footprint on the land compared to ...
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Washington Board Upholds Stormwater Rules
The Pollution Control Hearings Board—the legal body presiding over state environmental regulations—has upheld the stormwater permits governing Western Washington cities ...
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America’s Best Stormwater Monitoring?
Polluted runoff is bad. Green stormwater infrastructure is good. But as rain gardens proliferate like frogs after a rainstorm and ...
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What Ever Happened to the Stormwater Rules?
Remember the Puget Sound stormwater permits? Washington state was ready at last to get serious about cleaning up polluted runoff ...
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The Little Red Wagon Stormwater Solution
Residents in West Seattle were anxious about plans to install dozens of roadside rain gardens used to control spills of ...
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Checklist for a Healthy Rain Garden
Rain garden maintenance has emerged as one of the big hurdles to expanding the use of green stormwater solutions. You ...
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Rain Gardens, the Glamour Issue
Foodies get to drool over countless images online and in print of perfectly posed burgers, pies, and other culinary treats. Now rain garden junkies and the bioretention-curious can indulge in inspiring photos and illustrations of green stormwater solutions in the newly released "Rain Garden Handbook for Western Washington: A Guide for Design, Installation, and Maintenance."
The handbook is a step-by-step guide on how to plan, build, plant, and maintain a smaller-scale rain garden. It explains how even a modest-sized rain garden will capture and treat significant amounts of polluted runoff that flow off rooftops and driveways.
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It’s the Soil, Stupid
The recent dust up over troublesome amounts of pollutants leaching out of a Redmond rain garden got me thinking about soil. That's because the soil in a rain garden has to meet a lot of needs, some of which are in conflict with each other. It needs to soak up potentially large volumes of stormwater quickly, filter and capture pollutants, keep plants alive through sodden winters as well as summer droughts, and avoid leaching nutrients. Plus, the ingredients for the soil need to be locally, readily, and affordably available.
We're asking a lot of this dirt.
In Washington, the state's official rain garden guide and its "2012 LID Technical Guidance Manual for Puget Sound" include specific recommendations for the "bioretention soil mix" --- that's the layer of soil that lines the rain garden. Washington calls for a mix that is 60 to 65 percent sand or soil excavated from the site, and 35 to 40 percent compost. The sand component helps with the drainage and filtering, while the compost provides nutrients needed by plants and trees and can help capture pollutants.
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