Pepco Rain Garden Installation

On October 21, ICPRB and Pepco installed a new rain garden at Pepco's Benning Service Center, which is adjacent to the Anacostia River. About thirty volunteers, including twenty Eastern High School students helped with the installation - the second of four planned rain gardens at its Benning Service Center. The rain garden installation was made possible through a grant from the District of Columbia Environmental Health Administration, Watershed Protection Division. To learn more about rain gardens, click here.

A rain garden is a low impact development technique that decreases pollution by increasing absorption of stormwater runoff near its source. Rain gardens are built in low-lying areas, with specific layers of soil, sand, and organic mulch. These layers naturally filter the rain as it runs into the rain garden. After a storm event, the soil holds the rainwater and nourishes the garden's grasses, trees, and flowers.

For more information on rain gardens or other pollution reduction techniques that your business can institute, contact Steve Saari at 301-984-1908x103 or ssaari@icprb.org.

The garden is approximately 35 feet in length, 18 feet in width, and 39 inches in depth. During a summer thunderstorm with one inch of rainfall, the rain garden will filter about 9,000 gallons of runoff from this site. Over the course of a typical year, the facility will clean 340,000 gallons of runoff before it reaches the Anacostia River.

The rain garden targets the major pollutants that impact the Anacostia and the Bay. Specifically, Pepco estimates that it will reduce the stormwater pollution including:

– Total suspended solids by 90%;
– Total phosphorus by 65%;
– Total nitrogen by 80-90%, and;
– Total organic wastes by 60-80%.

This rain garden is the latest effort in non-point source pollution prevention and reduction efforts by Pepco in the Anacostia Basin. They have shown leadership in pollution prevention within the business community by creating filtering wetlands on their property, diminishing storm water runoff, and instituting strong institutional recycling programs.

The infiltration swale was designed and constructed by Ecosite, Inc. The Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB) is managing the installation at the PEPCO facility, the second it has helped install. The ICPRB also has worked on the design of three other bioretention facilities in the Anacostia Basin. Both ICPRB and Pepco are members of the Anacostia River Business Coalition.