Grant funds Mill Creek pond project

MILL CREEK — Armed with a shovel, Mill Creek resident Jim Hodgkinson waded into a retention pond near his Mill Creek home, where he quickly learned the proper technique to plant aquatic plants.

“I’m very happy we’re able to do this,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot – more than I ever thought (I could).”

As part of a Southwest Water Management District Community Education Grant the community earned, residents of Mill Creek VII on May 21 enjoyed a seminar about stormwater management systems (retention ponds) and aquatic plants before heading to a retention pond to plant vegetation in a bare littoral shelf. The new aquatic plants will help filter chemicals and pollutants from the water before it runs farther into the aquatic system and eventually into Tampa Bay.

In doing so, the plants also will help minimize unsightly algae blooms, improve water quality, minimize erosion and provide habitat for birds and fish.

The grant will fund the seminar and planting workshop as well as five pond plantings and the future installation of signage and of two pet waste stations.

“It gives residents an opportunity to really become more hands on in protecting their natural resources,” Community Education Grant Coordinator Robin Grantham said of the project.

Homeowners in Mill Creek VII on June 2 will vote on how to use grant dollars, opting to let the pond vegetate naturally, to install select plants or to mulch the littoral zone, which takes topsoil, full of seeds, from a donor wetland and places it on the littoral shelf to promote plant growth.

Hodgkinson and fellow resident Rita Cohen applied for the Southwest Florida Water Management District’s Community Education Grant, which is meant to provide people with an opportunity to create community-based educational experiences that will help protect and conserve Florida’s ecosystem, in August.

The pair learned they’d won $4,000 of the $5,000 they requested in January.

The Southwest Florida Water Management District in June will be taking applications for Community Education Grants. For information, visit www.watermatters.org/communitygrants.

BEST PRACTICES
Southwest Florida Water Management District Community Education Grant Coordinator Robin Grantham offered a few ways homeowners can help improve the water in their community:

• Avoid fertilizing plants before a heavy rain
• Fertilize only during the growing season, which is in early summer
• Use pesticides sparingly

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].