The Water Spot : stormwater stormwaterenCommunityServer 2007.1 (Build: 21119.1142)Leave the Leaves, 14 Jan 2014 14:45:00 GMT9be1e196-b4dd-4219-b883-7e290dbe3f82:1489Jessica Woods0<p><img border="0" hspace="5" alt="" align="right" src="" width="120" height="120" />The leaves have been falling from some of the trees for a few months now, although my trees like to wait until March to drop leaves, darn live oaks!&nbsp; Raking is usually a job I reserve for the kids, as I&#39;m not a huge fan of doing it.&nbsp; I&#39;d much rather just mulch them up and leave them on the yard than raking and picking them up.&nbsp; My kids would rather take a cue from Snoopy!</p> <p>I know, leaves don&#39;t sound like a water conservation issue, but they are--and also a water pollution concern.&nbsp; One of my colleagues in the City&#39;s&nbsp;Stormwater group and I were talking about the leaf blowers...folks that just blow their leaves down the storm drain or in the street and what a nuisance that is;&nbsp;not only the noise, but the actual blowing the leaves down the storm drain.&nbsp; In most cases, those drains lead to ponds and creeks.&nbsp; <em>No storm drains&nbsp;go to the wastewater treatment plants</em>.&nbsp; The leaves clogging up the water ways then&nbsp;can block out the sunlight in our waterways, which has negative effects on our aquatic life and&nbsp;aquatic plants.&nbsp;&nbsp;Little or no sunlight means plants and animals don&#39;t get light, no photosynthesis for plants to live, no food for animals.&nbsp;&nbsp;The added nutrients from the leaves&nbsp;also can act as poison to the plants and animals, too much fertilizer in the water isn&#39;t a good thing.&nbsp; </p> <p>The&nbsp;leaves in the storm drains&nbsp;can also&nbsp;clog up the actual drains themselves and prevent&nbsp;stormwater (rain)&nbsp;from entering the storm drain,&nbsp;causing flooding, since the water can&#39;t go down the drain as it&#39;s designed to.&nbsp;&nbsp;Keeping stormdrains clear is one way to help prevent flooding.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </p> <p>Of course, you&#39;ve heard&nbsp;that leaves are a great source of nutrients for your yard and it&#39;s really best to mulch them, ideally,&nbsp;with&nbsp;a mulching mower.&nbsp; They can also be raked up and put in shrub beds, around trees, or piled up to start a compost pile,&nbsp;letting them degrade on their own&nbsp;over time.&nbsp; The City&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="">Drop-Off Recycling Center&nbsp;at 310 Deepwood Dr</a> also takes your&nbsp;bagged&nbsp;leaves and creates mulch, which is free to City water customers to come and pick up for their use.&nbsp;&nbsp;Leaf mulch is a great way to keep water loss&nbsp;to a minimum around your trees and beds; a nice layer of&nbsp;mulch also&nbsp;prevents weeds from growing in these same&nbsp;areas.&nbsp;&nbsp;<img style="WIDTH:391px;HEIGHT:395px;" border="1" hspace="10" alt="" align="right" src="" width="1334" height="1040" /></p> <p>The picture to the right&nbsp;is basically what the leaf compost piles look like at my&nbsp;house.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have a wire cage that&nbsp;I simply fill up with leaves each year.&nbsp; Rain keeps it wet (this year, anyway!), which helps&nbsp;speed up the composting process.&nbsp; Allowing air to circulate in the&nbsp;pile helps speed it up too--so turning the pile occasionally helps, or stirring it up.&nbsp;&nbsp;With no action or input from you, it will take about 2 years for the pile to decompose.&nbsp;</p> <p>There are several online resources that talk about the benefits of&nbsp;mulching and ways to&nbsp;manage your leaves:</p> <ul> <li>EPA&#39;s Composing pages talk about <a href="">grasscycling</a>.</li> <li>Aggie Horticulture promotes the <a href="">Don&#39;t Bag it Program</a> </li> <li>TCEQ has a Yard Wise mulching and composting flyer <a href=""></a></li> <li>And the EPA&#39;s <a href="">Take Care of Texas site</a> has easy tips about composting and leaf mulching.</li> <li>City of Austin&#39;s Grow Green program mentions it in their <a href="">Earthwise Guide to Lawn Care fact sheet</a>.</li></ul> <p>&nbsp;</p><img src="" width="1" height="1">storm waterstormwaterleavesrakingleafmulch