Good Growing

In this episode of the Good Growing podcast, hosts Chris Enroth and Ken Johnson are joined by Colleen Reuter, Environmental Compliance professional at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, to explore the world of green infrastructure and stormwater management.

From rain gardens and rain barrels to depaving driveways and even the surprising role of beavers in flood control, this episode dives into practical, research-based strategies that homeowners and communities can use to reduce erosion, manage runoff, and improve water quality.

We also preview the upcoming Illinois Green Infrastructure and Erosion Control Conference, a free, public event packed with expert speakers, hands-on solutions, and professional development opportunities.

Conference Info: October 28 at the iHotel in Champaign, IL
Register at: ccstormwater.org
Registration deadline: October 14 

Watch us on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OpiuAlNO1As 

Skip to what you want to know:
00:43 Hey Ken! It rained...a little.
02:18 Welcome Colleen Ruhter!
03:05 Who are the partners for the Green Infrastructure and erosion control conference, and what is green infrastructure?
04:38 Why is managing stormwater important?
06:44 How does an impervious surface affect stormwater runoff?
11:25 What is depaving, and why is it a good idea for people to depave their landscape?
16:10 How do rain gardens help manage stormwater?
19:52 Are rain barrels effective when dealing with typical amounts of stormwater runoff?
23:37 Why are fall leaves a problem with stormwater management?
25:09 Is it useful for communities to work together to reduce pollution in the stormwater system?
29:03 Separating combined storm sewer and sanitary sewer systems.
32:01 Are there any good examples of communities that have incorporated green infrastructure into their stormwater system?
32:56 One of the conference topics is going to be about beavers. Are beavers considered a good stormwater management tool? 
35:10 Where can people go to learn more about the conference and about stormwater management?
37:57 Thank you and coming up next week.

Contact us! 
Chris Enroth: cenroth@illinois.edu
Ken Johnson: kjohnso@illinois.edu 


Check out the Good Growing Blog: https://go.illinois.edu/goodgrowing
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Any products or companies mentioned during the podcast are in no way a promotion or endorsement of these products or companies.

Barnyard Bash: freesfx.co.uk 

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Creators and Guests

Host
Chris Enroth
University of Illinois Extension Horticulture Educator serving Henderson, Knox, McDonough, and Warren Counties
Host
Ken Johnson
University of Illinois Extension Horticulture Educator serving Calhoun, Cass, Greene, Morgan, and Scott Counties

What is Good Growing?

Talking all things horticulture, ecology, and design.

Chris:

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb , Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. Green infrastructure, erosion control, managing stormwater. We've got a special guest with us today. We're gonna cover that including a conference that is coming up on campus that's gonna be diving into all types of topics.

Chris:

I I would love to go attend this one, and we're gonna cover that today. But you know I'm not doing this by myself. I'm joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.

Ken:

Hello, Chris. Speaking of storm water, we finally got some water coming from the sky this weekend.

Chris:

Goodness. I didn't know what that stuff was. It was it was a mystery as I was sitting there, and and all of a sudden, this wet stuff started falling on me. So, yeah. But I didn't get that much, Ken.

Chris:

I got a tenth of an inch. How much did you get in Jacksonville?

Ken:

I think I don't have a rain gauge. Well, we have one, but it's not outside. But I think looking at the the weather apps, I think we got around three quarters of an inch. So Yeah. Still behind.

Ken:

I think we're supposed to get in some more today, Tuesday. So hopefully definitely not gonna catch up, but we're getting there.

Chris:

That's true. We do have a big green blob on the radar map right now to the west of of Western Illinois. So fingers crossed, it gives us some moisture. That would be nice. I think my hydrangea just died.

Chris:

I I think they're done. They wilted. I thought, you know what? I'm not gonna water them. I'm gonna push them to the limit like we tend to do.

Chris:

And, yeah, I'm pretty sure they're dead.

Ken:

Pushed them a little too far.

Chris:

I did. Yeah. That's what we love to do with our plants. Oh, yeah. Well, I I think with rain in the forecast, what better time to introduce our special guests today?

Chris:

And we're gonna be talking about the topic of green infrastructure. We're gonna talk about erosion control, things that we can do in our backyards when we're dealing with stormwater. So I'd like to welcome Colleen Reuter. And Colleen, you are the environmental compliance professional with facilities and service on the U of I Champaign Urbana campus. And you feel free to correct my title roll off there.

Colleen:

No. That that was perfect. I work in environmental compliance within facilities and services. So, generally, we help, with the various environmental permits, that the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign campus has, and one of those permits is a stormwater permit. So, we help maintain that compliance on campus.

Chris:

Excellent. And we're gonna dive into all of that today. So, Ken, why don't you get us started on this week's questions, please?

Ken:

Alright. So Chris mentioned there's a conference coming up. So, the conference is the Illinois Green Infrastructure and Erosion Control Conference. So what exactly when we're talking green infrastructure, what exactly is that?

Colleen:

So let me start first with the stormwater partnership that's putting on the conference. So the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign along with Champaign Urbana, Savoy, Champaign County, and the Champaign County soil and water conservation district collectively are called the Champaign County stormwater partnership. And every other year, we host the Illinois green infrastructure and erosion control conference to help fulfill some of the requirements of the stormwater permit that I just mentioned. And as far as green infrastructure, green infrastructure is kind of a general term given to structures and other mechanisms that are built to help control, slow down stormwater to help prevent erosion, flooding, and help with pollution prevention and pollution removal from stormwater when it hits the ground in a rain event. Stormwater can also be called rainwater, so those two are used interchangeably, but that's generally what green infrastructure is talking about.

Colleen:

You can have rain gardens or infiltration basins or permeable pavers or bioretentions, all kinds of stuff that fall into the category of green infrastructure.

Chris:

Those all sound like exciting things to have in our yards and in our communities. But I'm sure the question comes up or is broached about, well, why do we need to worry about this? Why is it important to manage our stormwater?

Colleen:

So stormwater, when it comes hard or fast or long or frequently, you know, the the ground can only absorb so much water. And especially when we have hard surfaces that are in the way of absorbing stormwater. So having stormwater management to offset the hard surfaces, which are also known as impervious surfaces, helps to control, like, through engineering and design to help control the stormwater so that we know what rate the stormwater is going to be released at, how much water is going to infiltrate into the ground to help with water recharge back into the water tables. Green infrastructure can be used to help remove pollutants. Like, nitrogen and phosphorus are natural elements in water, but they cause pollution when they get into waterways.

Colleen:

So helping to remove those, helping to remove trash, helping to remove oil, even temperature can be a pollutant. So if water hits hot asphalt and then goes into the creek, that temperature change can actually harm the environment. So there's lots of different things that can be offset by controlling stormwater when it hits the ground.

Chris:

I'd say Illinois also has that unique, like, geological history. We've been scraped clean a couple times by glaciers, and I we're we're we're flat. Like, when that water hits the ground, where is it gonna go? You know? It it's there's there's not as much slope here.

Chris:

So you're out on the eastern part of the state, Colleen. I'm Ken and I were out west. So, yeah, we're in Flatland, Illinois. That's what I like to call it. Flatland, Illinois.

Chris:

Yeah.

Ken:

So you mentioned kind of the those impervious structures or surfaces not allowing kind of water to to get into kind of how does that how do the surfaces kind of affect that runoff, you know, coming in from from other places and stuff?

Colleen:

So naturally, water hits the ground, and if it's grassy or if it's loamy from being in, like, a forest, the water can easily absorb into the grounds the ground surface, and then it can make its way to the local streams or go deeper and recharge the aquifers and the water table. If the water's hitting hard surfaces like buildings, sidewalks, roads, parking lots, the water can't get into the ground. And so if it's hitting those surfaces, it has nowhere to go but downstream. And like you just said, it's kind of flat, but there's still, you know, a little bit of slope to the ground pretty much everywhere, but it's going to try to flow away. So it's going to pool in the low spots in our yards.

Colleen:

It's going to pool in the roads as it's trying to get to the stormwater basins. And if we have a lot of rain or heavy rain and the stormwater pipes aren't sized to handle that amount of water, it's going to back up, and so that causes flooding. Or the water can pool in an area where it starts to wash out the soil. So you can have erosion in your yard. You can have erosion in the creek behind your house.

Colleen:

You can have erosion on construction projects, which have their own permits to help mitigate and stop the erosion on them, but it can happen. We've all seen the, you know, streams that are highly eroded where you have what are now gullies instead of a nice smooth waterway. So that can all cause erosion, you know, in a in a variety of settings, and then that soil is being washed out into the waterways, carrying with it pollutants and, solid materials that can affect the waterways there. And so you can have a light distribution, being, you know, negatively affected by solids in the water. Nitrogen and phosphorus getting into the water can cause algae blooms, And then the algae, when it dies off, it uses up oxygen.

Colleen:

So then the fish don't have any more oxygen to breathe, and you can have fish kills from that. So there's a whole lot of things that all contribute and come together with stormwater management and pollution prevention. So it's a it's really a mouthful, but there there are a lot of things to be concerned about, in terms of practical effects of stormwater on our day to day living.

Chris:

Pauline, you sorry. I have to go back and say, you had mentioned undersized, like, culverts. And a long time ago, I was at a I worked at a public works department, and that is something that we dealt with all the time. Just we didn't have the money to build the infrastructure necessary to handle the higher volumes of stormwater that we were encountering. And boy, you said that.

Chris:

And it's kind of it took me back to meetings talking about, you know, we're getting larger storm events, and we we we really should maybe design these culverts to be a little bit bigger and just didn't have the money for it. So, yeah, I mean, you took me back there.

Colleen:

Well, you know, money is always a concern for municipalities. Absolutely. And another thing you just hit on, climate change and climate patterns are real, and the size storms that engineers are having to design for is changing. And so with that, you know, there's going to be, you know, bigger infrastructure that's required. So the more that green infrastructure can be built on the front end when rain hits the ground before it goes off into the waterways, the smaller, you know, the culverts and the storage basins have to be.

Colleen:

And, that brings up an interesting, idea, I guess, is that one of our presenters is Trent Ford, the state climatologist, and he's going to specifically be talking about stormwater management in a changing environment. So that will be a really good topic at the at the conference. And I forgot to mention the conference is October 28 all day on a Tuesday.

Chris:

Well, I think you said that perfectly. Like, it it is so important to to to load this green infrastructure, especially in that front end to help handle some of this stormwater. So let's talk about some of the things maybe homeowners can do. Now, this idea of depaving, the word document that we used, they really want me to correct this doc this this word depaving. It doesn't recognize it.

Chris:

So what is it? And and, you know, why should people consider depaving their landscape?

Colleen:

So depaving, I'll be honest, is a new word for me as well, but I'm pretty excited about it. One of our presentations is from Mary Pat McGuire. She is a landscape architect at the University of Illinois, and she is talking about her, pilot project called Depave Chicago. And so they're starting the initiative to encourage removing pavement, removing hardscapes to help with stormwater management and what they're calling climate adaptation. And, obviously, it sounds big and scary.

Colleen:

Deep Pave Chicago. You know? I'm just Joe, homeowner who owns a quarter of an acre. What can I do? Right?

Colleen:

So you can you can still do things in small bits and pieces that ultimately add up. Consider removing your sidewalk and putting in, like, pavers, stepping stones. So there's less hard surface there. There's more soft surface whether you put in soil and grass or whether you put in a lightly graded gravel that the water can easily infiltrate into. So you've got you've got the combination of the two, removing of hard surface plus increasing soft surface.

Colleen:

So you'll help with stormwater management there. Another thing that I've seen people do is putting in driveways that just have, like, two strips of concrete that are, you know, a little wider than your tires on your car. So you can still park on a hard surface. Your car isn't going to sink sink into the mud when it rains, but then the rest of the area that is your driveway or was your driveway could be either grass or gravel, again, to allow more water to infiltrate in that area. And then a third idea, which is a little bigger, would be if you're considering building a new house, if you're considering building a garage, consider building it just a little bit smaller.

Colleen:

Reduce that footprint by a little bit. And these cumulative effects of lots of homeowners, lots of homeowner associations, you know, if you're a business owner, consider the same thing for your business. Little steps all put together can make a big difference, overall.

Ken:

And we've we've got a gravel driveway and as nice as it would be to at times to have a high asphalt or concrete, especially when it comes to shoveling. There's a kind of notice with us from our neighbors. You can see there's the water kinda coming off in sheets, when it's raining, and we don't necessarily have that on our driveway.

Colleen:

One interesting thing that I'll interject here, Ken, is that if gravel's driven on often and especially with really heavy equipment, it can become compacted, and it doesn't allow as much water through as, like, a grass and natural soil, but it can obviously be better than a straight up hard surface like a concrete. So if you had a drive aisle driveway where the the gravel is never being driven on, then that's never gonna get compacted. So, you know, there's different options there.

Chris:

That's a good point. I we had where I a town I used to live, oddly enough, you couldn't have a paver driveway, but you could have the the two tire concrete like tire paths with gravel, and that was perfectly fine. And so that's what a lot of people would wind up doing since they couldn't put pavers or anything as their driveway. They would just do gravel and just put lay concrete there where their tires would be. That seemed to work.

Colleen:

Funny story. When I lived and worked in Annapolis, Maryland, this person had a 5 or $6,000,000 home that they were building, and they put in a half million dollar driveway made of wood planks so that they had a wide enough separation that it didn't count as an impervious surface so that they can make their house bigger. But they spent a half million dollars on their driveway. So

Chris:

One day, I'll I'll have that budget. Not really, but I I

Ken:

never yeah. Keep keep buying those lottery tickets.

Chris:

I am. I am. I promise I am. I'm trying.

Ken:

Alright. Another, I guess, you know, green infrastructure stormwater management technique we hear a lot about in in kinda home landscaping is rain gardens. So how do those work with reducing runoff?

Colleen:

So a rain garden is like a garden area that's depressed or concave, a bowl cut into your lawn. Right? And then it's oftentimes constructed with special soil, so sometimes called an engineered soil. So it just makes sure that the organic matter and sand ratios are appropriate to help infiltration rates, so the water going into the ground appropriately while still giving enough nutrients for the plants that you plant in it to grow and thrive. Generally, they're made or they're planted with native plants, and native plants can develop roots that are sometimes eight or 10 feet deep.

Colleen:

They're amazingly deep. There's some really great pictures on the Internet of native plant roots, and I think even some of them go even deeper than that. But, anyway, the water that flows into this rain garden, you'd wanna position it appropriately where the water from your roof is going into it, and then it collects it in the bowl. So that's slowing it down to begin with. The special soil is allowing it to infiltrate into the ground more.

Colleen:

And then the plant roots, the water will actually follow the plant roots down deep into the soil. So it helps to get the water to reach the water table easier. The plants can uptake the nutrients, the nitrogen and phosphorus. That's what you buy when you buy fertilizer. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Colleen:

So you're getting a lot of the nutrients to fertilize these plants naturally. Plants can even uptake some heavy metals, so they help take that out of the out of the stormwater. And then when we have a drought, which we're all familiar with that this summer, the plants with those deep roots can pull the water from further down in the ground, so you don't have to be manually watering and fertilizing the plants in this garden. So, ultimately, the garden can should be more economical for you because once you plant them and you get them established, you're not paying to fertilize them. You're not paying to water them.

Colleen:

They're beautiful. They're helping control storm water. Native plants are great for pollinators. So the birds and the bees and even some and and butterflies are are all happy with your garden. So you have this great thing in your yard that's contributing to stormwater management and looking beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, while it's doing it.

Chris:

Excellent. Oh, I I I have I've done a few rain gardens professionally, but I've never done one in my own yard, and I need to. Because I do have some spots that could use a little help when it comes to the storm water management.

Colleen:

So one thing that homeowners do wanna be aware of is if you have a spot that's continually sledding, you may want to pay an engineer to help you analyze your soil because certain soils just won't infiltrate the water as well. So you take to spend money planting a rain garden in this trouble spot if it's not going to actually work for you. So, you know, if you if you do have a situation like that, you may want to a little bit of help before you do invest. You know, obviously, it takes some money to invest into these things, but ultimately, you know, the the the benefits should pay off for you.

Chris:

And another thing I have not yet invested learning more about are rain barrels. So thinking about the the volume of water that can fall from the sky, like, how how effective are rain barrels in reducing stormwater runoff?

Colleen:

Okay. So food for thought here. I've known this statistic for way too many years. If you have a thousand square foot house, which realistically is kind of a small house. Right?

Ken:

Mhmm.

Colleen:

A thousand square foot house in a one inch rainstorm, which is kind of a normal statistical rainstorm, you get 623 gallons of water. That's a whole lot of water, coming off of a little bitty house. Most rain barrels are 50 gallons. So, you know, you're at one twelve. So that's, like, six ish percent of the water coming off of your roof if you have one rain barrel.

Colleen:

It's not nothing. You know, it's you're not stopping the entirety of the water coming off your house. But if everybody in your neighborhood had a rain barrel or decided to string together even two or three, and there's actually a house in Urbana that I drive past frequently that has six. They've got three, and then they've got this plywood set up, and then they've got three more. They're all tied together.

Colleen:

So they've got 300 gallons of water, you know, on the side of their house. So, collectively, it can definitely help offset and prevent some of the stormwater runoff that does occur in storms. And, you know, then you have 50 or more gallons of free water that you can use on your garden, on your vegetables. And plants actually like rain garden or rain barrel water because it's non chlorinated. The water coming out of your tap, unless you have a well, is is chlorinated from the public water system.

Colleen:

So plants don't really like that chlorine. And then additionally, that water is coming from underground. It's at, like, 50 degrees ish. And in the summertime, especially, plants don't like the shock of the cold water and the warm air and the warm soil. Similar to what I mentioned earlier with creeks not liking the hot water coming off of asphalt, Plants don't like cold water.

Colleen:

So if you have water stored in rain barrels, it's going to be the ambient temperature. So or if you have it in the shade, it'll be a little cooler. You know? But it'll be 75, 80 degrees, and that's a perfect temperature for plants. They're a lot happier when the water being poured on them is, you know, more tepid, I guess.

Chris:

Maybe it it is worthwhile for me to look into some rain barrels on the side of the house then. Yeah.

Colleen:

When when I owned a house and the first house that I rented, I actually talked to my landlord and got permission to put them in, and I've always enjoyed them. So you can also paint them, decorate them. They can be a fun little, you know, addition to your yard. And I know a lot of people worry about mosquitoes, but, you know, they they are generally designed with mosquito netting, and you can buy products to help manage mosquitoes if they if they do get in there. And I've even heard of people putting goldfish in them, and the goldfish take care of the mosquito larva for them.

Colleen:

And then, you know, I guess you take the goldfish out in the winter and bring them in the house and put them back out in the springtime. But, yeah, there there are ways to mitigate the small problems that, you know, can come with just about anything. You're always gonna have small problems with a lot of stuff. So doing your best to make the best of it.

Ken:

Goldfish will add some fertilizer for you too. Yes. Alright. So we are I guess, we in fall now?

Colleen:

Yeah. Technically, we're

Ken:

tech technically in fall now. So fall is here, which means at some point that in a lot of places, leaves have already started dropping just because of the drought and trees being stressed. But eventually, we'll get to the point where our deciduous trees are are dropping their leaves in earnest. How can this affect, our our stormwater management systems?

Colleen:

So leaves can contribute to stormwater issues in two different ways. You have the plant material that will break down and contribute nitrogen, phosphorus, tannins, other things into the water as well as well as the solids materials. So once that gets into the water, like I mentioned before, it can cause light issues. It can cause turbidity issues, which is like the milkiness of water. The nitrogen and phosphorus can cause algae blooms, which can use up oxygen and cause fish kills.

Colleen:

So the organic material decomposing can cause its own problem. And then separately, and I you know, obviously related would be leaves collecting on top of storm drains and then blocking the storm drains. So even if you have a larger pipe under that, if the whole top of it is blocked, you're gonna have flooding backing up into the roadways. So they can cause, you know, two different but related problems with the stormwater system.

Chris:

How do, like, some of these community cleanup activities help with these waterways then? You know, if you're you're in an HOA, I know you you often, you'll have this little retention pond or maybe have streams and such. So do these community cleanup efforts to get trash out or to get the leaves out, are those are truly beneficial then to reduce all the problems that you've just mentioned?

Colleen:

Absolutely. You know, if it's safe to do so, you could go out and remove leaves from a storm inlet if you're seeing, you know, build up there to prevent that kind of flooding. You're preventing that organic material from getting into the creek. So that's, you know, something you can do. People can rake their leaves and, you know, compost them at, a community compost.

Colleen:

Sometimes the bags are collected by your communities for composting. You could put them in your own composting pile or turner that you have. A person could use a mulching lawn mower. You'll set it on the mulch setting, and then it chops up leaves into little pieces that will go down between the blades of grass to the soil. And then when it breaks down there, it's no longer polluting the water.

Colleen:

It's fertilizing your yard. So you're fertilizing your yard with your own leaf materials. So those are some ideas for combating, you know, leaf issues. And then in terms of, like, bigger scale community cleanups, those are absolutely important. A lot of communities have community cleanup days.

Colleen:

Here in Champaign Urbana, we have Boneyard Creek community day every April, around Earth Day to celebrate Earth Day. And removing trash. Trash is just unsightly. It can, you know, harbor bacterias and all kinds of just it's just gross. And leaf material, we find random things like bicycles and boots and whatever.

Colleen:

And then another big problem are plastic bottles. And all this when it gets into a single waterway you know, a single waterway washes to a bigger waterway, which washes to a lake or ultimately, you know, the Mississippi River and then to the Gulf. Right? So when this trash is washing down, it's decomposing. And so the organic materials contribute the pollutants that I mentioned earlier, but almost worse are the plastics that are breaking down.

Colleen:

Plastic breaks down in sunlight. And so it will eventually become small pieces that animals are eating. So that fish that you're catching out in the river or out in the Gulf may have plastic all throughout the interior of its body. So do you really wanna eat that fillet for dinner tonight? I'm not sure.

Colleen:

And then also, you know, if the plastic breaks down even further, it can become you know, to a molecular level, it gets absorbed by the water. And then you've got plastic contaminants, PFAS, and other things that are being absorbed into the water. And a lot of communities in The United States use surface waters like lakes and rivers for their water drinking water sources. So it becomes harder. It becomes more difficult to filter out all these chemicals in order to have safe drinking water for everybody.

Colleen:

Let alone, you know, water at a recreational level where it's safe enough to go boating, to go fishing, and to go swimming. You you sometimes see, you know, beach closures because there's too much bacteria. The water's too hot. It's the bacteria and the algae are blooming too much, and it's unsafe for humans and pets to go in the water. So it's all it's all related.

Ken:

Alright. So one thing that depending on how how deep into the weeds you get with stormwater stuff, that you may come across is, an MS four. So so what is that and and kinda what what what does that entail?

Colleen:

So MS four is pretty much the, father of the whole idea of this, environmental conference. MS four stands for municipal separate storm sewer system. It's it's, you know, a little bit of a tongue twister there. A lot of bigger cities, or maybe more so older cities have combined sewer systems. So their sanitary sewer and their stormwater sewer systems are piped together.

Colleen:

Everything goes into the same pipe. It all goes to the wastewater treatment plant. And then if there's overflows, you get a big rain, it all overflows usually into a nearby river. And so it can cause problems. So I I'm not sure when it was a hundred years ago, maybe.

Colleen:

Somebody got smart and decided to separate the sewage pipes from the stormwater pipes. And so there are now many communities that are separate storm sewer systems. And there are over 350 m s four communities in the state

Ken:

of

Colleen:

Illinois. You get these permits based on the size of your municipality or the population density. They're I'm not sure exactly of the rules, but, if you're a certain size, basically, you'll you'll be given this permit by the state of Illinois. And then you have this permit. There are a lot of different what are called best management practices that you have to meet in order to fulfill this permit.

Colleen:

And one of the categories of the sick there are six categories. One of the categories is outreach and education. So that's where this conference comes from, doing outreach and education to our constituents to educate people, to educate engineers, professors, designers, students, homeowners, the general public about various stormwater topics. So, that's, you know, where the m s the idea of an m s four come from, and then why this conference came about was to meet that permit requirement. Pretty much every MS four community in the state will have information about their permit and how they fulfill the permit requirements on their websites.

Colleen:

So you can look up your community's municipal website and then search for MS four or NPDES, which is National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Those two are kind of used interchangeably. And if you search for those, you should be able to find the report for your local MS four that says what they're doing to meet all the different permit requirements, for that community.

Ken:

Do you have any examples of places, in Illinois that have that have kinda done a good job of incorporating, some of the screen infrastructure, I guess, on a kind of a municipal level.

Colleen:

So, as you know, I work at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. We have I believe it's about 60 green infrastructure facilities, that have been built on campus. One of our presenters is coming down from Cook County. His name is John Watson. He works with the Cook County Forest Preserve.

Colleen:

He's coming to talk to us about stormwater management in Cook County, and it'll be really interesting to see how the larger communities with a denser population, more impervious surface, how they're dealing with stormwater management. And I would say most communities in Illinois that have an MS four have probably implemented at least some green infrastructure to some extent.

Chris:

One of the topics that you're gonna have at the Illinois green infrastructure and erosion control conference is going to be about beavers. Now I'm curious, are beavers a good stormwater control technique, and and how can I get one in my backyard?

Colleen:

So come to the conference to find out. Right?

Chris:

Alright.

Colleen:

We're really looking forward to having Suzanne Haney from Biohabitat. She's coming up from, I believe, Tennessee to talk at the conference about beavers. And she calls them I'm going to read this so I don't mess it up. Beavers, the original ecological engineer. What can North America's largest rodent teach us about restoration?

Colleen:

So it'll be a really interesting presentation. There's actually a Midwest beaver conference every year where people from across the Midwest come together and talk about beavers and how they can be used in stormwater management and, you know, related issues. So this will be really interesting. Of course, it's a somewhat controversial topic. Yep.

Colleen:

You've got private property rights and, you know, property damage and nuisance animals have to be managed appropriately. So there's definitely a balance between how to allow people to use their property as they want, but also accepting the fact that beavers do stormwater management really well. Beaver dams naturally hold back water to prevent flooding. It naturally infiltrates the water into the ground. It naturally filters out the pollutants.

Colleen:

They're actually great, fire protectors. There are there are some really cool photos online where you can see forest fires, and then there's just this lush green area in the middle because there's a beaver dam or two right there. So they they can be really great for the environment. Engineers are known to try to mimic beaver dams, to try to to try to emulate that means of providing stormwater management. So that will be a really great presentation, at the conference.

Ken:

So people are interested in in this conference, or they wanna learn more, where should they go to do that?

Colleen:

So the registration and some general information is on the Champaign County Stormwater Partnership website, which is ccstormwater.org. There's a basic infographic with the topics, and there's a register now button. The conference is all day, October 28. It is free to the general public. It includes breakfast and lunch.

Colleen:

Might be worth coming just for that. And, you know, it's gonna be a really great day of presentations. And I actually forgot to mention our our fifth presentation is going to be Sola Gradia Farm in Urbana and the Land Connection from Champaign. So they partnered together in regards to food security or food insecurity, and their presentation is about how local farms can help with food security. And then we're going to the Sola Gradia farm for a tour at the end of the day.

Colleen:

So that will kind of pull everything together. The conference also includes five professional development hour credits. If you are a professional engineer who needs some last minute credits before the license renewal at the November. Some of us, have not finished all of our credits, for for this per or for this licensing recycle cycle. So I'll be glad to get a few extra in right before the deadline.

Colleen:

And it's just going to be a really great day. There will be, you know, people there, some good camaraderie and networking, and it's really every year is an enjoyable conference, every other year, when we have it, and they just keep getting better and better. So, the Stormwater partnership and all of the members who are working on this together, we're all really excited about this and hoping to reach a broader audience. Part of why, we're doing a couple of interviews like this and hoping to get some people to come and join us. It'll be a really great day.

Chris:

Excellent. And if folks have not figured it out yet, Colleen, you pretty much sent us the topics and speakers, and we've kind of just touched on everything that's gonna be discussed. So if people want to learn more about anything we've discussed today, come to this conference. Absolutely. Show up.

Colleen:

Yeah. Absolutely. It's at the I'm sorry. It's at the iHotel

Chris:

Mhmm.

Colleen:

There in Champaign on October 28. Breakfast starts at eight. Conference starts at 08:30. We should wrap up around 04:00 and, you know, let everybody go home at the end of the day. So I look forward to seeing you.

Chris:

Well, that was a lot of great information about green infrastructure, some erosion control techniques, things that we can do in our own backyard, and things that our communities can participate in to help and assist with some of the stormwater management that we all have to deal with here in Illinois because after all, we are in flatland part of the world. Yes. We are flat. There's not many places for that water to go. Well, Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth.

Chris:

A special thank you, Colleen Reuter. Thank you so much for joining us today and and and talking about this, all these different things that we can do in our own yards and participate in our communities. And then also, you know, I'm excited to, you know you know, promote this conference. I hope a lot of people show up and and learn how we can do more for our communities.

Colleen:

Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for having me on. This was pretty fun. I was a little a little intimidated to begin with, but it worked out pretty well.

Colleen:

And, oh, one last thing. Registration deadline is October 14, but I can't remember if it's midnight before or midnight after. So if you're gonna do it, you know, try to do it by the thirteenth, just to make sure because we gotta have an accurate headcount, for food. So registration is required, but it is free. So thanks again.

Colleen:

I really appreciate you having me come on to represent the Stormwater Partnership and, talk about our our conference we got coming up.

Chris:

Excellent. And, Ken, thank you for, as always, joining us, hanging out, and talking about green infrastructure.

Ken:

Yes. Thank you again, Helena. Learned learned some stuff here. Great. And Chris, thank you as always.

Ken:

Let's do this again next week.

Chris:

Oh, we shall do this again next week. The spotted lanternfly. What's that? Have you heard of it? Well, I think it's on our doorstep, if not in the house.

Chris:

So we're going to talk about that next week. So listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.