Best Management Practices

Stormwater management reduces or eliminates the negative impacts of stormwater runoff. Today, stormwater management includes controlling flooding, reducing erosion and improving water quality. This can be accomplished by implementing what are known as Best Management Practices (BMPs). BMPs are structural, vegetative or managerial practices used to treat, prevent or reduce water pollution.

Watershed BMPs

In this activity we will reuse the material from Watershed in a Pan. We are going to change our watershed features to produce a land model that is less steep.

Materials needed

• Baking dish or plastic tub

• Aluminum foil

• Cups, glasses, newspaper, or any material found around the house

• Spray bottle with water (optional: add two drops of blue food coloring to water)

• Measuring cup

• Vanilla Extract

• Sprinkles, colorful sprinkles and chocolate sprinkles

• Powdered cocoa

• Green and red colored sugar sprinkles

• Paper towels

Procedure, Part 1

1. Place cups, glasses, etc upside down on one side of the baking pan to represent higher levels of land. Alternately, crumpled newspaper works well to create hills and valleys.

2. Leave one end of the pan empty to represent a low lying area.

3. Cover the entire pan with aluminum foil, gently molding the foil around the objects in the pan.

4. Examine your watershed model. Do you have areas that clearly represent streams? If not, use your fingers to press down low lying (valley) areas to simulate streams.

5. Gently add a small amount of vanilla extract, and sprinkles to your watershed to represent pollution. Place cocoa around stream banks to represent erosion.

6. Add 1/2 cup of water to measuring cup and pour into spray bottle.

7. Make it rain! Use the spray bottle to make it rain on the hills and valleys you created.

Observe the movement of water. How many streams were formed? Did the water pickup and move the "pollution"? Where did the pollution end up? Are there other areas where water has pooled?

Use the spray bottle and a paper towel to clean all food remnants from the model. Carefully remove the water from the foil.

Stormwater Best Management Practices can improve water quality

Procedure, Part 2

1. Use strips of paper towels to line the banks of the streams you created.

2. Look for depressions where water formed in Part 1. Add paper towels to these areas.

3. Gently add a small amount of vanilla extract, and sprinkles to your watershed to represent pollution. We will not use cocoa this time as the paper towels represent a riparian buffer zone around your waterways and erosion is not occurring.

4. Add water to spray bottle, if needed.

5. Make it rain! Use the spray bottle to make it rain on the hills and valleys you created .

What changes do you observe? How did the riparian buffer zone help to protect the streams? Were there other areas that had observable changes?

What's Going on Here?

The paper towels represents riparian buffer zones along the stream. The root systems of these areas help to slow down the amount of water entering the stream. They also filter out pollutants before they enter the body of water. Paper towels placed in the smaller depressed areas represent raingardens and/or wetlands. These areas also allow excess stormwater to percolate into the soil, thus slowing down the flow of water and filtering out pollutants.

What do you think would happen if we repeated the experiment and added more layers of paper towel?

What about all the other Nonpoint Source Pollution in my watershed?

Reduction of "people pollution" is achieved through education campaigns. There are programs worldwide that focus on water quality education. You just completed a water quality education program. Now you can share what you've learned and help improve the watershed you live in!

What else can you do to protect your watershed?

• Pickup litter

• Pickup after your pets

• Never pour anything down a stormdrain

• Allow the area along creeks and streams to grow naturally

• Plant trees or bushes to increase root systems

• Use natural forms of fertilizers and pesticides

• Plant rain gardens in low lying areas where water collects or runoff occurs

• Share your knowledge with others!