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Current
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the Current Event:
Melvern's Riverfront
Park Opens:
A New Recreational
Resource for Area Counties
April is the month of new beginnings—soil is tilled,
birds make new nests, and the Kansas’ landscape is transformed to every
conceivable shade of green one can imagine. And, this is the month that
the community of Melvern will officially celebrate the opening of the new
Melvern Riverfront Park and Trails recreational system.
The dedication celebration, held April 25, (the
Saturday after national Earth Day) begins with a free pancake breakfast
for the first 200 people from 8:30-10:00 a.m. Activities continue
throughout the day with lunch, guest speakers, a fishing contest,
demonstration events, informational booths, and a “Bike for Fun” ride in
the new park to wrap up the day. Food concessions will be onsite for
lunch and refreshments.
Only 30 minutes south of Topeka, the new riverfront
park is located at 710 N.E. Pine Street in Melvern, Kansas which can be
accessed by taking Highway 75 south to Highway 31 just east of the
Melvern Lake dam. Take Highway 31 east to Melvern and N.E. Pine street is
3 blocks east of Main Street--turn left and the park and parking area is
7 blocks north.
The park features 7 miles of trails and represents a
significant new recreational resource for citizens and youth of Osage and
surrounding counties. Most of the trails are considered “single track”
and are open to walking, hiking, and mountain biking enthusiasts.
However, the River Trail loop is six feet wide, improved and surfaced
(with a grant from the Kansas Sunflower Foundation), so visitors can walk
side-by-side past the old quarry wetlands and along the Marais des Cygnes
River to the park fishing areas.
The dedication ceremony will be held at 10:30 a.m.
The park and trails system was initiated as a result of Melvern’s
participation in the statewide Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities (HEHC)
Program to help communities plan and manage their local natural resources
and water quality.
The park
represents a unique combination of ecosystems and natural resources for
education activities—a distinct goal identified by Melvern’s Friends of
the Trail group to enhance appreciation of water resources as a community
asset. Local educators have developed lesson plans for use on the trail
for K-12 students and Melvern welcomes educators to visit the natural
area with their students for field trips and outdoor classrooms. The
lessons will be available soon for download on the HEHC Website via the
“Educator Resources” link,
CLICK HERE.
Robert Harmon, a local fishing expert, will start
the day with a talk about fish habits at 9 a.m. before the fishing derby
for kids, which starts at 10 a.m. Informational booths on water quality
and other subjects will be open throughout the day during the event.
Scott Rice, KS Corps of Engineers at Melvern Lake will present “What’s in
the Water” at 11 a.m. and Jim Hoy, Kansas Humanities Council will present
“Home on the Range” a presentation on the local history of the Melvern
area at 1 p.m. after lunch.
Rides to the river will be available in multi-person
golf carts for those in need of assistance—just give your name to the
greeting person at the main gate into the park. Transportation will be
provided on a first-come first serve basis from the sign-up list. Don’t
forget to bring your walking shoes, lawn chairs, or your mountain bike
for this great event!
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Rossville Gardens:
Rossville demonstrates how rain gardens benefit storm water and
beautifies their community.
The Park Seed catalog is here! The Park Seed catalog
is here!
Spring is the time of year when we all start
thinking about ways to make our yards and communities pretty and
attractive. Community gardens are one sure way to beautify any public
space, and some communities are “kicking it up a notch” by creating
community beautification projects that are “blooming useful” too!
Rain gardens utilize native plants and can be built
in low-lying areas to capture excess runoff during rain storms to
recharge your local ground water supplies and reduce water leaving site
where it falls—which can reduce flooding potential. These gardens don’t
need any fertilizers or pesticides and because native perennial plants
are used, your rain garden can be designed to provide habitat and food
for local bird and butterfly populations.
A year ago, Rossville’s Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities (HEHC)
project team and community volunteers, decided to build a rain garden to
treat the runoff from a new parking lot in their city park. We’d like to
take this opportunity to congratulate the Rossville citizens for a JOB
WELL DONE! Their decision to build the rain garden began last year. To
see the Spring 2008 PRIDE newsletter for details,
CLICK
HERE.
In March and April of 2008, Rossville’s HEHC team
partnered with K-State’s Landscape Architecture Regional and Community
Planning department on a WaterLINK grant to have two graduate students
assist them with the engineering and design plans for their rain garden.
In May and early June, despite numerous early summer
rains, community members met for several construction and planting day
events. They hauled tons of large stones and local contractors
participating in the project, volunteered their labor and equipment
services to prepare the ground for more than 1500 plants that would go
into the rain garden.
More than 30 people showed up for “planting day”
including representatives from Westar Energy’s Green Team. Talk about
community team work—even local high school students, working with Sheila
Marney, the Science teacher at Rossville Jr. /Sr. High School,
participated in the project.
Rossville volunteers worked more than 300 hours on
the rain garden through the summer and their work was rewarded with a
garden that was awash with many beautiful blooms of native plants in late
summer and early fall. And this spring, the perennials should give an
even bigger show!
If you would like to learn how to build a rain garden to beautify your
home or community, Rossville has prepared an instructional brochure that
can be downloaded from the PRIDE HEHC Web site by
CLICKING HERE. (This is a
large format 17 x 11 pamphlet, so if you want to print it out be sure to
select the “shrink to printable area” or “fit to printable area” options
on your printer if you are using 8.5” x 11” paper!) We’d like to thank
the City of Lawrence for allowing us to adapt their rain garden brochure
for the Rossville project.
If your PRIDE team is interested in participating in
the Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities (HEHC) Program, please call
Sherry Davis, the HEHC project coordinator, at 785-532-3039 or
785-313-5283, for more information on how the program can help your
community protect its natural assets and local water quality, and get
more citizen involvement in community planning.
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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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