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Moraine Valley Community College has received a $500 Illinois Rain Garden grant from the Office of the Governor to develop a rain garden in its 40-acre Nature Study Area. While still serving as Lt. Governor, Pat Quinn initiated this project, which was designed to empower students and communities to confront local flooding concerns, restore native Illinois prairie habitat, and learn green solutions to storm water management.
The trail entrance to Moraine Valley’s Nature Study Area is on a slightly declining slope. Overflow from a pond northwest of the trail can cause trail flooding, which often deters faculty, students, and the community from using the Nature Study Area. A rain garden running along the sides of the path will serve as an educational opportunity and will alleviate this problem allowing users to take full advantage of this outdoor classroom and laboratory.
Installation of the rain garden has begun and will be finished for the fall 2009 semester. Community volunteers, faculty, and students in the Biology Club are working to install the rain garden.
The Nature Study Area serves as a "living museum" of the earth for students and visitors. The reconstructed tall grass prairie is a relic of the days when it was inhabited by Native Americans and is home to the great blue heron, colorful mallards, schools of bass and bluegill, hundreds of plants and grasses, a 1.8-billion-year-old granite rock, deer, and coyotes. It also serves as an outdoor laboratory for faculty to take their students for fieldwork in biology, botany, geology, earth science, and environmental science. Students explore birds, animals, and plant life in their natural environment and learn firsthand about water and soil testing.
For news media inquiries, call Jessica Crotty, coordinator of College and Community Relations, at (708) 974-5281, or e-mail her at crotty@morainevalley.edu.
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