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Community
Water Projects:
Please click
on any of the following to view their community water project:
Rossville's
Rain Garden: Innovative, Beautiful, and Practical Storm Water
Management Addition to City Park
The Rossville
Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities Project team has built a
community rain garden as a water quality improvement project. The rain
garden demonstrates how homeowners, businesses, and community planners
can reduce runoff, recharge local groundwater supplies, and remove
contaminates in storm water before it enters local streams and lakes.
The community team also produced an instructional brochure with
detailed guidance on site selection and layout, construction, planning
and maintenance of train gardens. You can download the brochure CLICK HERE or
stop by and visit their garden at:
714 Main Street
in Rossville, KS - across from the City Park anytime you are in
Rossville!
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Melvern
Links Water Quality Education and Ecosystem Appreciation with
Riverfront Trail System
Melvern, Kansas
is a community with abundant water resources: the Marais de Cygnes to
the north, Long's Creek to the southeast, and Melvern Lake to the west.
Until recently though, citizens had to drive all the way up to
Eisenhower State park to enjoy a recreation site where you could walk
through the woods or sit in a quiet fishing spot by the river. As part
of Melvern's HEHC water quality and natural resource planning project,
their community elected to rehabilitate 40 acres of land that was once
a dumping site for trash and limbs, into a beautiful riverfront park
for outdoor education and recreation.
Melvern used
their HEHC process to explore ways their river area's natural resources
could provide water quality education to citizens and youth, and to
expand the project's value to other community assets. In a public
planning meeting they identified ideas for health and exercise
programs, opportunities for outdoor classrooms and field trips to the
area for students, new recreational events, and potential economic
opportunities. The project has led to the creation of a new civic
group, The Friends of the Trail, and has opened new leadership
opportunities for their youth and citizens.
Melvern's water
quality BMPs brochure for park visitors is available at the park kiosk
or by CLICKING
HERE.
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The
HEHC Vision. . .
Our vision for the Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities Project is
citizen-lead planning and actions to sustain environmental quality and
community health. |
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| What is the relationship between your community and its
ecosystem?
The health of a
community and its local ecosystem is dependent on the intricate
relationship between the people that live there and how they interact
with their surroundings–the land, water, plants, animals, and
natural resources. By definition, the word “resource” means
reserve, supply, or store; so the health of a community is dependent on
the health of these natural “supplies.”
Water, incredibly rich
soils, lush grasslands and a wealth of wildlife enticed settlers to
Kansas over 150 years ago and supported our state’s agricultural
economy and heritage. However, as with any limited store of supplies,
using them in a way that sustains the quantity and the quality is
necessary to ensure that these resources will be there for us and for
our children in the future. But how do we know what’s left of the
“reserves, supplies, or stores” that our community was
built upon? How do we measure the health of our community’s
natural resources?
The Healthy Communities
/ Healthy Ecosystems Project is here to help!
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