At William Floyd High School, we have worked with Environmental Club Advisor Ms. Amanda Huff to locate areas to construct our rain gardens. Since a rain garden is designed to infiltrate water, the best areas to place rain gardens are downspouts or sloped, low points. We have identified two possible locations with excessive flooding from rain collected in downspouts. Images 1 and 2 (from the left to the right) are where we have decided to construct our 10 by 10 ft rain garden.

The primary purpose of our rain garden project is to mitigate nitrate levels in our soil. A rain garden can remove 30-60% of nitrates in our soil. With the help of the Science Department Chairperson, Dawna Cintron, we received LaMotte soil testing kits to evaluate the current nitrate levels in our soil.

The testing process required using a nitrate indicator with cadmium reduction that undergoes diazotization/coupling to form a pink color. Levels are determined using the Octa-Slide 2 comparator. We have determined that the Nitrate level of the flooded area to be between 1.0 and 2.0 ppm NO3-N.

Work in Progess!