UMass dredged the Campus Pond last month
UMass Landscape Architecture students have set up a living laboratory on North Pleasant Street near the Bertucci's parking lot directly across from Kendrick Park to demonstrate a simple solution to the storm water run off that oozes into Tan Brook and then dumps into the UMass campus pond.
Plants can provide natural water filtration
Some plants actually like yucky gray water and by planting them in the flow path of Tan Brook they would naturally absorb some of the pollutants before they do damage to the pond.
The space required is pretty minimal, as little as five square feet. A series of these green patches could be planted along the path of the underground brook, brightening our downtown street scape while improving the environment.
Balloons on Kendrick Park above Tan Brook represent the Campus Pond
map of Tan Brook please!
ReplyDeleteNot sure there is one. It originates around the Regional Schools area runs down through/across Kendrick Park to the Campus Pond and is mostly underground.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear they will use some natural clean up. So then these plants are acting like toxin filters. When the toxins build up in these plants, do they get harvested and disposed of properly, or do we just feed them to incoming freshman to accomplish another town goal at the same time?
ReplyDeleteSmoking it would probably give you a hell of a buzz.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if you ferment it...
ReplyDeletePerhaps a brew your own mandate could help the drunk issue locally....
Old USGS topographic maps (search that term) show the Tan Brook before it was piped for much of its length.
ReplyDeleteThey go to UMass to learn all kinds of things. And they learn them well.
ReplyDeleteThey musta missed the corse on pond upkeep, true.
ReplyDeleteLarry, I don't know about this "Tan Brook" but the brook which feeds the Campus Pond -- the brook which was dammed to create pond, runs ABOVEGROUND until it gets to campus -- it is only underground from the Fine Arts Ce, nofnter to the parking lot behind the Visitor's Center -- it goes due south through various back yards, with both Fearing and Aminiy crossing it.
ReplyDeleteThe pipe is UNDER the FAC, not beside it, which raises the question of how they'd ever repair or replace it if they had to.
Now as to the odors and such, that's organic matter and aneorobic (without air) decomposition of it
Dearest Dr Ed.,
ReplyDeleteLarry's right on the Tan Brook's source and locations. (see the aforementioned usgs maps).
As a kid I lived off McClellan st and we would explore the little woods along the Tan Brook where it ran between Fearing and McClellan st. It then goes into a Culvert and the culvert makes a sharp turn left (eastward). (we kids were only ever brave enough to go as far as the turn in the pipe). It never gets to Amity.
There is a spot behind the Spoke where you can see it down in a grate and it's above ground behind the HS playing fields where it drains the man-made fenced off pond behind the HS near the Middle School access rd.
I'm glad to see it get cleared up!
-Tom formerly-of-Amherst
Tom is right -- I always get Fearing, McClellan & Amity confused.
ReplyDeleteIt was on McClellan where I saw somebody's woodpile floating downstream one afternoon after the torrential downpour of a thunderstorm.
As an aside Larry, with Bill Cosby's fall from grace, and it does appear that he is guilty, is there any talk of renaming Cosby street back to the Civil War General it initially was named after?
Please. Stop changing history.
ReplyDelete