| Stoughton Build Your Own Rain Barrel Workshops - 2023 |
Amount Funded: $1,500.00 |
| Rock River Coalition will start planning the 2024 Stoughton Build Your Own Rain Barrel Workshop with our partners as soon as we have confirmation of funding. We’ll work with our partners, the Stoughton Public Library, Sustainable Stoughton and the City of Stoughton, to schedule a date and time to hold the workshop at the library. We’ll create marketing materials such as an event flyer, newsletter announcements, press release, and social media graphics. RRC will promote this event using these materials and share them with local partners so they can help promote it. We will approach WisPak to see if they are willing to donate 25, 55-gallon drums. If they do not donate the barrels, we will purchase them. We will also purchase 25 rain barrel conversion kits. We’ll customize our Build Your Own Rain Barrel Workshop PowerPoint presentation to include Stoughton’s local water issues and use. We’ll create an event page with a registration button on the RRC website. After participants register, we will email them follow up information and reminders that the workshop is approaching. The day before the workshop the City of Stoughton Public Works will pick up 25 55-gallon drums from WisPak in Watertown. On the day of the workshop, we will bring all workshop materials to the Stoughton Public Library and hold the 2-hour workshop. We spend the 1st hour giving a presentation, answering questions and the second hour putting together the barrels. After the workshop we’ll send an email to participants with maintenance instructions. We’ll email the maintenance instructions again in the fall when it is time to decommission the rain barrels for the winter.
The City of Stoughton and its residents will benefit from these workshops when residents utilize their newly built rain barrels which help to control pollutants and suspended solids from entering the city’s surface waters as stormwater, ultimately improving The City’s water quality.
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| In partnership, Rock River Coalition, The Stoughton Public Library, The Sustainable Stoughton Committee, and The City of Stoughton with funding from the Stoughton Area Community Foundation, would like to hold a family friendly Build your own Rain Barrel Workshop for 25 households at the Stoughton Public Library in the spring of 2024.
Participants will learn how to create and install their own rain barrel, an easy way to reduce their water footprint and to improve the health of the Yahara River, a part of the Rock River watershed!
Each Build Your Own Rain Barrel workshop starts with a presentation where participants will learn about water conservation, local water issues and the many benefits of using rain barrels. We’ll use WisPak upcycled 55-gallon food grade drums to make the rain barrels. In addition to helping communities reduce their water footprints: upcycling the drums for their second lives as rain barrels keep 1,000s of pounds of plastic from entering the waste stream. As part of this workshop participants will receive all the materials needed to build their rain barrel that they will then take home.
Why rain barrels?
• Rain barrels capture water from a roof and hold it for later use protecting local waterways by reducing urban runoff that transports litter, motor oil, and other pollutants into storm drains.
• Rain barrels can moderate flooding, decrease land erosion, and also reduce the amount of moisture that reaches your home’s foundation.
• Rain barrels save money and water by cutting back potable water used for irrigation. You can capture about 312 gallons of water for every half-inch of rain that falls on a 1,000 square foot roof. The average American family directly uses 110,000 gallons of water each year and 30% of that is used outdoors.
• Rain barrels also reduce demand for energy-intensive treated tap water. Rainwater is free of additives (such as chlorine, fluoride, salts) that tap water has. Over time, these compounds accumulate in the soil and potentially harm plant roots and microorganisms in the soil.
• Saves water during droughts.
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