News & Publications
St. John's Marks Earth Day with Rain Barrel Project
FOR RELEASE: April 16, 2009
CONTACT: Rosemary Harty, 410-972-4511
Reharty@sjca.edu
In celebration of Earth Day, St. John's College students will conduct a rain barrel installation lesson on campus Wednesday, April 22, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The demonstration, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the St. John's Board of Friends and Project Politae, the student community outreach group at St. John's.
Rain barrels will be installed at two sites on the campus: Pinkney Hall, on the east side of campus, facing McDowell Hall; and the Carroll Barrister House, an administrative building on Prince George Street. These particular sites have been chosen to demonstrate the environmental benefits of rain barrels. Once they are attached to existing downspouts, the barrels catch and therefore reduce the first onslaught of storm water from the buildings' roofs. The water then seeps through soaker hoses attached to the barrels to water surrounding plants and shrubbery. In turn, the receiving vegetation completes the job by filtering out the pollutants.
St. John's students have been trained and will be assisted by volunteers experienced with rain barrel installation from St. John's Friend's Environmental Matters Committee, the Spa Creek Conservancy, and Arlington Echo Education Center.
St. John's College is located on College Creek, one of the four tributaries of the Severn River in the Annapolis watershed. The rain barrel installation marks another environmental effort at the college, which recently removed the bulkhead along College Creek to restore the natural shoreline. The college's two new dormitories are energy-efficient, and heated and cooled by geothermal systems. A new energy-saving heating system and new pipes were also recently installed on campus, and rain gardens were created between two large parking lots to capture and filter runoff from the pavement.