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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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