There’s little that can be done to prevent the most prevalent source of pollution.
“We’re never going to stop the source,” Skrabal says. “Bacteria is present anywhere there is warm-blooded animals, whether it’s wildlife
or pets. It’s ubiquitous. And we’re never going to be able to treat the receiving waters when they are already full of bacteria. That’s not
realistic.”
That’s why Skrabal and the Coastal Federation, Jacobs and Surfrider, and Harrison and the county are activity encouraging and educat-ing
any and all on solutions to keep it out of the water.
“You can have your cake and eat it, too,” Skrabal says. “We can still have development and protect our waters. Because we have such
sandy soil here, all you have to do is direct it into a spot and it would have a dramatic effect.”
There are simple steps. Developers can use permeable concrete. Homeowners can use
rain barrels to catch water coming off roofs, and point downspouts into yards instead
of down driveways.
The grounds of the North Carolina
Coastal Federation’s regional office
in Wrightsville Beach include
permeable sidewalks and a rain
garden with native plants.
And they can install rain gardens.
“They hold the water and let it soak into the ground,” Jacobs says. “The goal is to slow it down, spread it out, and soak it in.
If everybody had ocean-friendly practices, 90 percent of the pollution in our water would be eliminated.”
They come in all shapes and sizes, from small home plots to large-scale municipal projects. But they all start the same
way: by digging down.
“You dig a depression somewhere where you run all the downspouts into the depression to hold water for up
to 48 hours,” Jacobs says. “It can be as simple as digging a good, deep ditch with sod. It sounds more compli-cated
that it is.”
Even though a good ditch can do the job, the experts recommend filling the depression with native
plants.
“They help hold the water until it soaks in,” Skrabal says. “They are disease resistant, they are resil-ient
to this climate and this community, and you don’t have to water them. We’ve never watered or
treated the plants in our rain gardens. Irises, gladiolas, palmettos — those are meant to get wet.
For all intents and purposes it’s another beautiful little planted area. And they survive and
thrive in these settings.”
The Coastal Federation has installed two gardens at its building in the town’s
historic square on West Salisbury Street, and a larger one at the head of the John
Nesbitt Loop.
“There’s a street drain there that connected with other drains and went
straight across into Lees Cut, dumping all this hard surface stormwater,”
Skrabal says. “We cut that line and redirected the flow into this area,
and created a lower basin and planted it with things that grow on
this island naturally, gorgeous plants. This holds a lot of storm-water
before it overflows and goes out into Lees Cut. Our rain
gardens drain in less than 24 hours no matter the size of
the storm. We have really good infiltration rates. Could
you say that everywhere? No, of course not. But
Wrightsville Beach is sandy.”
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