GALLERY: Spring-Ford Intermediate Has New Outlook on Water Conservation

Spring-Ford Intermediate School was chosen to receive a grant from Pennsylvania American Water to install a 1,250 gallon rain water harvest system. Steve Senn of Senn Landscaping is partnered with complete aquatics and was in charge of the digging for the project. The excavation started at 8:30 a.m. on July 18, and continued until about 4:00 p.m. on July 19.

The rain water harvest system drains rain water from the roof and goes through a filter to clean it. Blocks made from 100 percent recycled material percolate the water, which then gets pumped up and out onto decorative bubble rocks. The water then seaps through the patio blocks back into the blocks underground and the process starts all over again.

The system installed at Spring-Ford will also have an automatic drip system on it, which allows any overflowing water to drain into the pond and also saved so it can use the water to water their garden and its plants.

Terry Maenza, director of Communcations and External Affairs at Pennsylvania American Water, said that "annually Pennsylvania American Water has an environmental grant program and we look at projects from around the state that community groups are doing to restore and improve watersheds and further environmental protection of water resources. This year we had approximately 50 applications from across the state and we selected seven projects to fund with environmental grants.

"This project here at Spring-Ford Intermediate School was a perfect example of showing how to preserve reused water with a rain water harvesting system," Maenza said. "It’s not only a great project and demonstration to show about reusing rain water, but also the educational aspects because it will be a teaching opportunity for the teachers and the students."

Teachers Dacia Williams and Mary DeAngelis both helped to excavate and prep the area for the system.

"We were thrilled and excited to get the grant from Pennsylvania American Water to do this rain water harvesting project," said Dacia. "Hopefully we will teach as many students as we can about this project and it becomes something of interest community-wide."

On the team for Complete Aquatics was technical sales representative Roger Sears. He said they sent out over 450 invitations to various landscapers and landscape companies asking if they would donate their time to help with the project. In return, they would get a free seminar and demonstration on learning about rain water harvesting systems and rain gardens, how to incorporate it into their work and how it helps us as a whole.

"I help train the contractors to learn how to incorporate rain harvest systems into their landscapes," Sears said. "It allows them to offer this service to homeowners so they can capture the rain that comes off of their house and [are] able to reuse it within the landscape. The end result is that less water leaves the property. So, when we get a heavy rain storm, we don’t have the influx of heavy water running down into the actual overworked storm water systems."

Sears said they actually made up a study where if there were 100 houses in a community that installed a 1,250 gallon system, for each one inch of rain homeowners would save 85,000 gallons from running into the streets.