For Missouri Soil Specialist, Conservation Begins at Home

One rainy day, Ray Goodwin looked out a window and discovered that most of his backyard topsoil had washed downhill and clogged a storm drain.

It wasn't a pretty sight to Goodwin, 41, of Kansas City, North. He is paid to fix erosion problems as an urban soil conservationist in the Northland for the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

"I had to take all that saturated soil and lug it back up the hill," he said.

So two years ago he began working on answers.

Now, rainwater runs into his backyard pond. It's an outdoor hangout, a swimming hole in summer and an ice rink in winter.

Also, he pumps water from the pond so his lawn stays green. His water bill stays about $30 in the summer while his neighbors' bills spike above $100.

"I wanted to develop something that would not only work for me," Goodwin said, "but it can also be used to solve some of our storm water problems in urban areas."

His basic water control concepts are borrowed.

But his approach to an individual homeowner project is unusual, experts say. And it comes as government planners and developers are looking for more ways to reduce flooding from storm water and put the water to use.

Development creates more hard surfaces such as roofs and driveways. They replace moisture-absorbing soil and ground cover that slows water flow. The result is more flooding, damage to stream beds and less water for groundwater recharge.

Goodwin's answer was mixing a farm pond with the cistern designs of yesteryear.

Sunfish swim a stone's throw from his back door in a rock-lined pond that is 40 feet wide. The pond, which is 7 feet deep in the middle, is fed by water from a catch basin in the hillside waterway in his back yard and from gutters draining rain water from the roof into a buried plastic pipe system.

"I can see water bubbling up now," Goodwin said early last week as rain from a morning shower ran down the hillside into the basin and out of an inlet pipe in the pond.

In 2002, when he began the project, rainwater from his roof and neighboring homes in the Gracemor North subdivision flowed through his back yard in a swale that probably had replaced a small wet-weather hillside creek as homes were built. Erosion followed.

So Goodwin invested his own labor and $5,000 in building the pond and burying a sprinkler system in his yard. He installed an inexpensive water pump for the sprinklers and covered the pump with a dog house.

Kansas City officials allowed the pond to be built under the city's codes for swimming pools. Goodwin had to build a fence around his back yard as a safety measure. Biologists say his fish and frogs keep mosquitoes at bay. But he tosses in some larvicide just to reassure neighbors.

"My neighbors thought I was crazy when I started this," Goodwin said.

Many people would not want a pond in a small back yard, he said.

Yet the basic design works and has promise for use on a larger scale, Goodwin said. A pond shared by a neighborhood and fed by rain on rooftops could be used to irrigate lawns at several houses.

A side benefit is the reduced threat of impure water flowing back through sprinkler systems into drinking water pipes when backflow valves fail.

Goodwin has showed off his pond to developers, and some have expressed interest.

"I think it's a great idea," said Vic Bonuchi, who is developing the 500-home Oakwood Estates in the Kearney area. "Back 50 or 60 years ago, everybody caught storm water off their roof and that's when they did the washing in, because it was soft water."

Bonuchi is considering designs for a similar system and had been studying Goodwin's pond for ideas. Only he wants to drain water into plastic tanks buried underground beside houses. Cheap water could be a selling point.

"I'd like to find a way where people could water their lawns and gardens with water from it," Bonuchi said.

From Goodwin's pond for one home to Lenexa's plans for combined lake and park areas for entire watersheds, experts say there are better ways to handle excess storm water than letting it erode creek beds or gush from pipes into the Missouri River.

"Dealing with storm water has come to the forefront of development," said Aaron Schmidt, planning and zoning director for Platte County. "People are paying a lot more attention to it."

The Summit Way housing development south of Platte City has left a stream corridor in place to handle storm water, said. It doubles as a scenic entrance.

Developers and planners interested in doing more projects that preserve natural areas, but outdated city codes that reduce flexibility are holding them back, said Ruth Wallace, an urban watershed planner for the Missouri Department of Conservation.

However, most counties and cities in the area are working with the Mid-America Regional Council to adopt new codes and long-range plans for watersheds.

One idea is to encourage more homeowners to use old-fashioned rain barrels. Some conservationists also are promoting rain gardens, where gutter downspouts are buried in the ground and flower gardens designed for moist soil conditions are planted nearby.

IMAGE: Creating a backyard pond at his Kansas City, North, home was Ray Goodwin's way to solve storm water and erosion problems. Goodwin began the project in 2002 and invested his labor and $5,000 in developing the creative solution.

Story by Bill Graham and image by Fred Blocher of the Kansas City Star.