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The Deer Creek Watershed Alliance Campaign to Promote Rainscaping in the St. Louis Missouri Metro Area

Conservation, Gardening, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Here is my final paper for Strategic Communication Applications. It’s been graded now, but since class is over and I got a score that pleases me I didn’t make any changes here. As you’ll see, I refer to myself in the third person in this paper. That is because I decided to write it as if was an impartial observer. Enjoy!

Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann
Mary Bufe
PBRL 5380: Strategic Communication Applications
16 October 2020

This analysis will examine how public relations campaigns have encouraged the installation of rainscaping and rain gardens in St. Louis County and what were the results when citizens attempted to enact what the campaigns recommended. Rainscaping is a landscaping technique that utilizes green infrastructure including directing excess stormwater runoff into planted bioretention areas, known as rain gardens (Buranen). Some residents of St. Louis County have received cooperation from the county while installing their rainscaping features, while we know of one St. Louis County couple, Tom Winkelmann and Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann, who experienced persecution and harassment from St. Louis County for using the same recommended techniques.

Organization’s history and background

Deer Creek Watershed is an area of St. Louis County that is a sub-watershed of the River Des Peres Watershed. The River Des Peres Watershed is large and complex with portions in both St. Louis City and St. Louis County (EcoWorks Unlimited 6). In 2008, citizens who lived in the Deer Creek Watershed approached Missouri Botanical Garden to explore ways of mitigating destructive water runoff activity in their locality. Missouri Botanical Garden formed an alliance for the purpose of exploring plant-based solutions to stormwater runoff problems with these citizens, along with “Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, Washington University, East-West Gateway Council of Governments, American Society of Civil Engineers, Great Rivers Greenway, Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Missouri Stream Teams, River des Peres Watershed Coalition, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis County, local garden clubs” and 21 local municipalities (EcoWorks Unlimited 6, 9).

St. Louis County entered into an agreement with the federal Environmental Protection Agency from 2003-2013 (Sutin) to reduce storm water runoff and pollution, problems that rainscaping helps to fight. Combined sewer overflows, sanitary and stormwater, have been plaguing the St. Louis metro area for years, causing damage and pollution in the area and downstream. As a result the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is required by the EPA and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment to fix the problem in 23 years. The clock started in 2011 (Buranen).

St. Louis County and the Metropolitan Sewer District, hereafter known in this document as STLCO and MSD, have constituencies that overlap. Besides being fellow members of the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, aka DCWA, these two organizations are logical allies in the fight against stormwater pollution and flooding.

Demonstration projects along with testing and water quality monitoring were performed by alliance members in parts of the affected watershed in order to successfully prove the effectiveness of rainscaping techniques (EcoWorks Unlimited 23-25, Winkelmann “Aquatic Macro Invertebrates…”, Buranen). Since the majority of land within the target watershed is privately owned, it was necessary to enroll citizens in the alliance’s goals and projects (EcoWorks Unlimited 19, 22).

Organization’s Mission, Vision and Brand

In its own words, the mission of DCWA is “facilitating a community-wide effort for over 10 years to protect and improve water quality through plant-based solutions” (The Deer Creek Alliance).

After its inception, DCWA recommended the following public relations efforts to enlist citizen involvement (EcoWorks Unlimited 22).

  1. Rainscaping demonstration projects in schools.
  2. Workshops for area professionals.
  3. Annual public engagement projects led by citizens.
  4. Building a contact list of citizens in the watershed through tables at festivals, networking, presentations utilizing PowerPoint, and media campaigns.
  5. Cultivating the contact list with email newsletters, the web site, and public meetings.
  6. Helping cities communicate about pilot projects, incentives and barrier removal mechanisms.

In 2014, when the Deer Creek Watershed Management Plan Summary was finalized, St. Louis County resident Carolyn Hasenfratz, now known as Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann, was single and living within the Deer Creek Watershed in a condominium in Brentwood. Already an avid gardener, she obtained a permit to garden around her condo unit right after her 2004 move in. Keenly interested in sustainable and eco-friendly gardening, she constantly updated her knowledge and practices with every bit of information she could glean from “green” gatherings and gardening resources. A frequent attendee at events such as Earth Day and the Sustainable Living Expo, she was aware of Project Clear, Operation Clean Stream and other alliance member activities through some of the table promotions mentioned by the DCWA(Winkelmann “Photo of Patches”). Observing water runoff problems around her condo unit, Winkelmann experimented with, to the extent allowed by the condo association guidelines, small scale stormwater control techniques (Winkelmann “Garden Maintenance in…”).

In 2016, Winkelmann successfully completed training and was certified in the St. Louis Master Gardener program, a membership she has retained until the present time (Winkelmann “Mass Communication Final…”). Master Gardener activities include yearly minimum time commitments for volunteer work and continuing education, and consequently brought Winkelmann into closer involvement with Project Clear and the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, as she personally participated in several of their outreach efforts and projects.

Missouri Stream Teams – Winkelmann became a volunteer at the Litzinger Road Ecology Center immediately after certification as a Master Gardener. LREC is a Missouri Botanical Garden facility and is located right on Deer Creek. Volunteers from Missouri Stream Teams, another DCWA partner organization, conducted a demonstration of surveying macro-invertebrates which is one of their methods of testing the effectiveness of rainscaping techniques (Winkelmann “Aquatic Macro Invertebrates…”). She has volunteered for several years in Operation Clean Stream events, an ongoing cleanup effort of trash along area waterways (Winkelmann “Operation Clean Stream…”).

Workshops for area professionals – Winkelmann attended a session on green controls for stormwater runoff at Missouri Botanical Garden to learn more about rainscaping (Winkelmann “Photo of Handouts”).

Presentations utilizing PowerPoint – After attending a presentation on Project Clear by an MSD representative, Winkelmann wrote an article for her employer’s newsletter to help disseminate the information to customers (Winkelmann “MSD’s Project Clear…”). MSD has been promoting a long-term campaign called Project Clear, the “planning, design and construction of MSD’s initiative to improve water quality and alleviate many wastewater concerns in the St. Louis region” (Winkelmann “MSD’s Project Clear…”). Project Clear utilizes a three-part classification system to organize projects. The category “Get the Rain Out” is the portion that addresses remedies in which individual citizens and property owners can engage (MSD Project Clear “MSD Project Clear Initiative”). The premise of “Get the Rain Out” is that if we reduce the amount of rainwater that goes into the stormwater management systems at peak times, disasters can be averted and the water quality for our region and those downstream from us will improve. The aforementioned practice of rainscaping is one of the two main initiatives in the “Get the Rain Out” category (MSD Project Clear “Rainscaping”). A prominent incentive touted for rainscaping is monetary grants to property owners who install rainscaping features. (MSD Project Clear “MSD Project Clear Initiative”).

Problem Statement

Carolyn Hasenfratz married Tom Winkelmann in 2018 and moved into the husband’s home in Affton. The couple started installing rainscaping features shortly after becoming engaged since the property had severe existing drainage problems. According to Winkelmann’s blog, the next-door neighbor made false claims to St. Louis County about the effect of the Winkelmann’s rainscaping on her property, resulting in a year of entanglements with the St. Louis County Department of Public Works. The husband, who is the registered property owner, was forced to appear in court under pain of arrest (Winkelmann “Drainage Problems Are…”). After the charges were dismissed in court in July 2019, Winkelmann’s blog reports that harassment of the couple by the St. Louis County Department of Public works resumed in January 2020 and persisted until the end of April 2020 when the couple contacted the County Executive’s office and provided video documentation of the alleged harassment (Winkelmann “St. Louis County…”). The current position of the St. Louis County Department of Public Works is that the rainscaping employed by the Winkelmanns is acceptable and no explanation was offered to explain their previous opposition.

Since St. Louis County is a member of the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, to have part of the organization undermining the alliance’s goals is confusing and could discourage other St. Louis County residents from adopting rainscaping techniques. The attitude of the St. Louis County Department of Public Works shown to this couple indicates that at least some of the inspectors and supervisor of inspectors are or were either uninformed about rainscaping, hostile to it, or both. Here is a quote from the supervisor of inspectors to Mrs. Winkelmann that seems to indicate skepticism about rainscaping as a concept, and mockery toward the homeowners for employing it. “Should a complaint come in about a public nuisance created by the ditches you’ve dug in your husband’s yard we will be required by law to re-issue the NOV and seek compliance. If you want to create a “rain garden” at some time in the future, and the necessary changes involved with that process are in violation of County ordinances, you will need to seek a special use permit or a zoning variance” (Winkelmann “Drainage Problems Are”). It’s less than precise to judge attitudes solely from written communication, but this supervisor refused to speak to the Winkelmanns on the phone or to visit the site in person despite repeated invitations, so this kind of communication is all the evidence of the department’s attitudes available.

Who is involved or affected? How are they involved or affected and why is this a concern to the organization and its publics?

Events in recent history have made it clear that flooding in St. Louis County is still a serious problem. For example, the River Des Peres flooded in 2019 and 2020, causing pollution and property destruction in South St. Louis (Hignett, Lincoln, Wicentowski). A South St. Louis resident estimated the amount of water in his neighborhood to be equivalent to the historic flood of 1993. 2019 and 2020 are eight and nine years into the 23-year agreement between MSD, the EPA, and Missouri Coalition for the Environment. The 1993 and 2019 flood events that the resident compared are very different in scale in terms of the effects on the entire metro area, so this one event may not mean that MSD is losing the battle and is going to miss their deadline. However, these recent floods could be regarded as evidence that there is still a lot of work to be done.

If the St. Louis County Department of Public Works is going to persecute people who try to be part of the solution, they will discourage property owners from adopting rainscaping techniques and we will all pay the price in higher sewer bills, flood destruction and deteriorated water quality. All subscribers to MSD are affected because of the cost, and every person who lives downstream from the St. Louis metro area is affected by decreased water quality – all the way to the Gulf of Mexico where there is a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi that varies in size every year (“Mississippi River…”). This has implications for the health of drinking water downstream, the health of fishing in the Gulf, property loss, decreased tourism, land erosion and possibly other destructive effects (“Mississippi River…”).

Mrs. Winkelmann personally spent over 43.6 hours of labor defending the rainscaping she and her husband installed, representing an economic loss because she is partially self-employed and that is time that she could have spent earning money instead (Winkelmann “St. Louis County…”). The couple spent approximately $300 on security cameras to obtain evidence to stop the harassment, and since they don’t live in the area that offers rebates to homeowners who install rainscaping, all of the property upgrades have been performed at their own personal expense (Winkelmann “St. Louis County…”).

MSD and the other members of the DCWA have invested huge amounts of money and labor into trying to convince the public to install rainscaping features on their own property (Buranen). MSD subscribers have partially paid for this advocacy with their sewer bills and will be paying for many more years. Many people do not have the resources, time, or the interest to fight St. Louis County and could be intimidated out of acting in an environmentally responsible way just because it’s easier and cheaper and keeps them out of court, not because they are indifferent the environment and our fellow Americans downriver.

Anyone who contributes resources to the following partial list of organizations, either voluntarily or through taxation, is potentially having some of their money that was spent on sponsoring the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance wasted: Great Rivers Greenway, Missouri Department of Conservation, US EPA Region 7, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Missouri Botanical Garden, Washington University, East-West Gateway Council of Governments, American Society of Civil Engineers, Missouri Stream Teams, River des Peres Watershed Coalition, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis County, allied local garden clubs and the 21 affected local municipalities (The Deer Creek Alliance, EcoWorks Unlimited 6, 9). Most of the money for the cost-share grants is derived from private property taxes (Chen).

Continued Advocacy and Outreach by Alliance Members

DCWA members continue to work on the organization’s goals of mitigating pollution, habitat loss and flood damage with the help of plants. The Alliance “Take Action” web page calls for the following activities (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Take Action”):

The Rainscaping Cost-Share Program – funded by the “Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, Mabel Dorn Reeder Foundation, and US EPA Region 7 through the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (subgrant number G19-NPS-11), under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act”, the cost-share program continues with large and small cost-share grants available, to help out individual homeowners, businesses and institutions (MSD Project Clear “Rainscaping”).

Education – online resources to teach property owners how to rainscape (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Rainscaping”, “Rain Gardens”).

Water pollution prevention tips (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Reduce Water Pollution”, Winkelmann “Online photo album…”).

Guidelines on conducting a citizen led creek cleanup (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Lead a Creek Cleanup”).

News of volunteer activities and opportunities from the Green Keepers, Great Rivers Missouri Master Naturalists, Missouri Stream Teams, Open Space Council and St. Louis Master Gardeners (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Webster Groves Green Keepers”). Some of the organizations listed here are official alliance members while others are assumed by this analyst to be allies as their goals and projects often overlap.

Invasive Honeysuckle removal (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Root Docking Invasive Honeysuckle”, Winkelmann “Tips for Removing…”).

News about continuing education opportunities (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Learning Opportunities”).

Project Clear outreach and educational exhibits in an annex at the new St. Louis Aquarium (Winkelmann “Online photo album…”). In this area visitors can get brochures about Project Clear, play interactive games, use an interactive and educational kiosk, view a demonstration rain garden and engage in other activities that educate about water quality and water conservation.

Evaluation

One result that is easy to see is that The Deer Creek Watershed Alliance did an excellent job getting the word out about the cost-share grants for rainscaping. This analyst found news articles about the availability of the grants from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Giegerich, Schuessler), Kirkwood, MO Patch (Greenbaum), St. Louis Public Radio (Chen) and the St. Louis American (“MSD accepting applications…”).

Have property owners been taking advantage of the grants? “In the model [first] round, there were only eight applications. The second [following year] round had sixty-six applications” reported an official in 2018 (Buranen). Two of Project Clear’s pilot rainscaping projects, Old North and Cortex, have been well-received by the public and the educational signage has been observed to attract attention and interest (Buranen). Interest in rain gardens has increased throughout the area even by those, like the Winkelmanns, who are not located in the grant award area (Buranen). For example, an alternate funding source provided the large rain gardens on the Webster University campus in Webster Groves (Buranen). The Deer Creek Watershed Alliance published an infographic in 2018, claiming credit for 364 rainscaping project installations among many other educational and environmental achievements during its first 10 years (Deer Creek Watershed Alliance “Achievements”).

Negative reactions

Since neither the St. Louis County Department of Public Works or the County Executive’s office would provide an explanation to the Winkelmanns about the initial resistance to their rainscaping (Winkelmann “St. Louis County…”), this analyst can only speculate about what the problem might have been. In a search for negative reactions in the St. Louis area to the idea of rainscaping, excepting the reports in the Winkelmann blog, only one example was found by this analyst. Here are a couple of selections from a letter to the editor, published by the St Louis Post-Dispatch in 2013 (Niehaus).

“New gardens may rain dollars” (Jan. 6) reports that homeowners in 14 communities may receive up to $2,000 if they “rainscape” their yards to retain run-off into the Deer Creek watershed.”

Mr. Niehaus put the word “rainscape” in quotes in a mocking way, similar to John L. Geiler, Assistant Chief Residential Inspector of St. Louis County Public Works, who mocked the Winkelmanns “rain garden” in his email without having first accepted an invitation to come to look at it (Winkelmann “Drainage Problems Are…”).

“Funny, I don’t recall voting on a measure that would pass along thousands of dollars to needy homeowners in Ladue, Clayton, Creve Coeur, Frontenac, Kirkwood, Warson Woods, etc.”

From that sentence and the rest of the published letter, it is apparent that there is a lot of information that this citizen did not know. For example, rain gardens put in along Deer Creek reduce flooding and pollution in places like South St. Louis and everywhere downstream from that, including many communities not as affluent as the places he mentioned. Nevertheless, appearing to divert taxpayer money to the benefit of wealthy citizens is not a good impression to create, and it would be helpful for the Deer Creek Watershed Alliance to continue to also promote the rain garden projects in other less advantaged parts of the metro area to raise their profile. With prevalent citizen apathy to government activities (Broom and Sha 362) and a dearth of reporters to create original news coverage (Grieco), a lot of misinformation that gets out into the public remains uncorrected and unexamined.

It’s more surprising that some St. Louis County government employees, who work for an organization that is a Deer Creek Watershed member, seem to be little better informed six to seven years later (Winkelmann “Drainage Problems Are…”, “St. Louis County…”). We know that there are many barriers to successful communication between citizens and government as well as branches of government with each other (Broom and Sha 356-366). In addition to lack of interest by citizens and a shortage of reporters, the scale of the task is overwhelming and there are bureaucratic layers, mistrust, and actors with varying agendas to overcome.

Despite all these challenges, the sources I have found in preparing this analysis seem to indicate that the rainscaping movement in the St. Louis area is not dying out, but rather is gaining momentum. Since the Winkelmanns have been left alone by the Department of Public Works since April 2020 (Winkelmann “St. Louis County…”), at least one more of St. Louis County’s internal publics, the Department of Public Works, seems to have been brought further into co-orientation with the other Deer Creek Watershed Alliance members. That is good news, because as evidenced by recent floods, the need for more green infrastructure in our area has not abated.

Works Cited

Allen, Michael. “The Harnessed Channel: How the River Des Peres Became a Sewer.” Preservation Research Office, 2010, preservationresearch.com/infrastructure/the-harnessed-channel-how-the-river-des-peres-became-a-sewer/. Accessed 16 October 2020.

Broom, Glen M. and Bey-Ling Sha. Effective Public Relations. Pearson, 2013.

Buranen, Margaret. “Tackling Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and Flooding Issues in St. Louis.” Endeavor Business Media, 2018, www.stormh2o.com/green-infrastructure/article/13034725/tackling-combined-sewer-overflows-csos-and-flooding-issues-in-st-louis. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Chen, Eli. “Curious Louis: How is St. Louis managing stormwater runoff?.” St. Louis Public Radio, 2017, news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2017-01-11/curious-louis-how-is-st-louis-managing-stormwater-runoff. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org. Accessed 18 September 2020.

—. “Achievements”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2018, www.deercreekalliance.org/achievements. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Take Action”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/involved. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “The Deer Creek Alliance”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/. Accessed 18 September 2020.

—. “Rainscaping”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/rainscaping. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Reduce Water Pollution”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/pollution. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Lead a Creek Cleanup”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/cleanup. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Webster Groves Green Keepers”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/wg_green_keepers. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Root Docking Invasive Honeysuckle”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/root_docking_honeysuckle. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Learning Opportunities”. Deer Creek Watershed Alliance, 2020, www.deercreekalliance.org/learn. Accessed 15 October 2020.

EcoWorks Unlimited for the Missouri Botanical Garden. “Deer Creek Watershet Management Plan Summary”, 2014, d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/deercreekalliance/pages/48/attachments/original/1526495599/Plan_Summary_20141030_WebVersion.pdf. Accessed 13 October 2020.

Giegerich, Steve. “St. Louis County residents could get money for rainscaping.” STLtoday.com, 2013, www.stltoday.com/news/local/st-louis-county-residents-could-get-money-for-rainscaping/article_f7412a5d-5699-56c5-884b-e4a1f66db66e.html. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Gilberg, Cindy. “Rain Gardens Contribute to Clean Water.” The Healthy Planet, 2011, thehealthyplanet.com/2011/05/rain-gardens-contribute-to-clean-water/. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Greenbaum, Kurt. “Want Your Kirkwood Yard to Look Like This?” Patch Media, 2013, patch.com/missouri/kirkwood/want-your-kirkwood-yard-to-look-like-this. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Grieco, Elizabeth. “U.S. newspapers have shed half of their newsroom employees since 2008.” Pew Research Center, 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/. Accessed 11 October 2020.

Hignett, Katherine. “Viral Video Shows Mississippi River Flooding at St. Louis as River Approaches Historic Levels.” Newsweek, 2019, www.newsweek.com/mississippi-river-flooding-video-crest-1443300. Accessed 16 October 2020.

Lincoln, Ashli. “Residents still allowed to live in condemned apartment complex in University City” KMOV | News 4 St. Louis, 2020, www.kmov.com/news/residents-still-allowed-to-live-in-condemned-apartment-complex-in-university-city/article_d7e46c52-038f-11eb-9a9c-dfdf78456667.html. Accessed 16 October 2020.

“Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force.” United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2020, www.epa.gov/ms-htf. Accessed 15 October 2020.

“MSD accepting applications for rainscaping grants through October 31.” St. Louis American, 2018, www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/msd-accepting-applications-for-rainscaping-grants-through-october-31/article_846e81d0-9978-11e8-a837-fba7498d138f.html. Accessed 15 October 2020.

MSD Project Clear. “Small Grants Program”. Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, 2020, msdprojectclear.org/what-we-do/rainscaping/small-grants/, Accessed 14 October 2020.

—. “Rainscaping.” Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, 2020, msdprojectclear.org/what-we-do/rainscaping/. Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. “MSD Project Clear Initiative.” Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, 2020, msdprojectclear.org/about/project-clear-initiative/. Accessed 13 October 2020.

Niehaus, Craig. “Sustainability siphons money and water.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2013, www.stltoday.com/opinion/mailbag/sustainability-siphons-money-and-water/article_0722da06-d6f2-5b67-b662-0395a41fa1f1.html. Accessed 16 October 2020.

Pringle, Travis. “Rainy Day Garden Party.” Patch Media, 2011, patch.com/missouri/universitycity/rainy-day-garden-party. Accessed 15 October 2020.

“Rain Gardens.” East-West Gateway Council of Governments, 2020, www.onestl.org/toolkit/list/practice/rain-gardens. Accessed 14 October 2020.

Rose, Angie. “A History of River des Peres.” Angieranderson, 2011, angieranderson.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/13/. Accessed 16 October 2020.

Schuessler. “Creve Coeur OKs incentives for eco-friendly landscaping.” STLtoday.com, 2012, www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/creve-coeur-oks-incentives-for-eco-friendly-landscaping/article_79beefd5-e848-53f9-92cc-d4024621bab0.html. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Sutin, Phil. “MSD promotes rain gardens, other methods to slow, clean storm water.” Publisher, copyright date, www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/msd-promotes-rain-gardens-other-methods-to-slow-clean-storm/article_629b10d2-ca5c-53fd-88ed-82e41c24136f.html. Accessed 18 September 2020.

Wicentowski, Danny. “The River Des Peres Is Eating South St. Louis.” Riverfront Times, 2019, www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2019/06/06/the-river-des-peres-is-eating-south-st-louis. Accessed 16 October 2020.

Winkelmann, Carolyn Hasenfratz. “Garden Maintenance in Wet Weather.” Schnarr’s Hardware Company, 2015, schnarrsblog.com/garden-maintenance-in-wet-weather/. Accessed 14 October 2020.

—. “Aquatic Macro Invertebrates at Litzinger Road Ecology Center”. Schnarr’s Hardware Company, 2017, schnarrsblog.com/aquatic-macro-invertebrates-at-litzinger-road-ecology-center/, Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. Photo of Patches. Facebook, 21 June 2017. www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10213641471095335&set=a.4010664309257. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “MSD’s Project Clear and Our Local Water Issues”. Schnarr’s Hardware Company, 2017, schnarrsblog.com/msds-project-clear-and-our-local-water-issues/, Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. “Tips for Removing Invasive Honeysuckle”. Schnarr’s Hardware Company, 2017, schnarrsblog.com/tips-removing-invasive-honeysuckle/, Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. “Drainage Problems Are Bringing Tom and Me To Court”. Carolyn Hasenfratz Design, 2019, www.chasenfratz.com/wp/drainage-problems-are-bringing-tom-and-i-to-court/, Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. “Mass Communication Final Paper”. Carolyn Hasenfratz Design, 2019, www.chasenfratz.com/wp/mass-communication-final-paper/, Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. “Operation Clean Stream 2019 on the Meramec River”. Carolyn Hasenfratz Design, 2019, www.chasenfratz.com/wp/operation-clean-stream-2019-on-the-meramec-river/, Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. “St. Louis County Harassing Us Again.” Carolyn Hasenfratz Design, 2020, www.chasenfratz.com/wp/st-louis-county-harassing-us-again/. Accessed 18 September 2020.

—. “Barriers to Government and Citizen Communication”. Carolyn Hasenfratz Design, 2020, www.chasenfratz.com/wp/barriers-to-government-and-citizen-communication/, Accessed 13 October 2020.

—. Online photo album with captions. Facebook, 27 September 2020, 10:55 AM, www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10224249615372312&type=3. Accessed 15 October 2020.

—. Photo of Handouts. Facebook,15 October 2020, 6:12 PM, www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10224390520054841&set=a.10223930154825998. Accessed 15 October 2020.

Mass Communication Final Paper

Marketing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For our mass communication final, we were to choose two questions from a list of four and write at least a page and a half response to each question. I admit I was in more of a rush on this one than usual because of unavoidable personal circumstances and how long my first question response turned out to be. I took some risks because I didn’t have time to second-guess myself. I don’t yet know my grade. I found two typos after turning it in which I have corrected here. What will happen?

2. Summarize and critique Social Marketing. How do you see the theory’s characteristics? Provide examples.

Everett Rogers was a researcher who studied the flow of information and personal spheres of influence in the early 1960s. Rogers developed the information diffusion theory and innovation diffusion theory to explain how new ideas and technologies get distributed and adopted. He found a progression through several stages: first comes awareness, then utilization by early adopters. Opinion leaders observe the early adopters and try out the new innovations and concepts on their own. If they find the new ideas useful, the opinion leaders spread the news to opinion followers that they associate with. The last group to embrace the new innovations are the late adopters who try the new ways when they see that the majority of society has accepted them (Baran and Davis 277).

Information/diffusion theories assign some of the awareness role to the mass media, explaining that elites get the process started, then change agents whose job it is to promote actions and ideas along with early adopters who are active and knowledgeable media users take over information dissemination (Baran and Davis 278). Innovations that were not a good fit for the intended users were found to fail in the long term even if people could be persuaded to try them. A top-down approach was not satisfactory without some modifications (Baran and Davis 279).

Social marketing theory is a body of thought that deals with the promotion of practices or products that take the public good into account and are not primarily motivated by profit. To bring about desired effects in society, an information provider empowers agents with various forms of support to become opinion leaders to an active audience (Baran and Davis 279).

I belong to an organization that utilizes social marketing theory effectively – the St. Louis Master Gardener program. Our Master Gardeners spread knowledge and perform volunteer work to increase area residents’ pleasure in gardens and gardening and to provide horticultural information (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Welcome Gardeners”). How does the St. Louis Master Gardener program exemplify the seven key features of social marketing theory?

Step 1. The first requirement is to raise awareness (Baran and Davis 279). Master Gardeners sponsor horticulture related events and garden tours and send speakers out to other organizations (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Welcome Gardeners”). Members can purchase apparel with the organization’s logo to wear while performing public volunteer duties (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Master Gardener Merchandise”). The Master Gardener program also uses their web site and Facebook page to promote the organization (St. Louis Master Gardeners).

Step 2. Secondly, targeting is employed to reach those who are most susceptible to the message (Baran and Davis 280). The sponsoring organizations of the St. Louis Master Gardener Program, the University of Missouri Extension and Missouri Botanical Garden, are prominent in horticultural education. The University of Missouri Extension educates one million Missourians per year (University of Missouri Extension). Missouri Botanical Garden, also known as MOBOT, is a world leader in research and as a provider scientific plant information (Missouri Botanical Garden “Research”). MOBOT provided 121.7 million dollars to the St. Louis region’s economy in 2017 (Missouri Botanical Garden “Annual & Strategic Reports”) and is a highly rated destination for tourists (Attractions of America). Many of the public sites where Master Gardeners perform work attract audiences interested in plants, gardening, ecology and outdoor activities (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Master Gardeners in Action”).

Step 3. Messages must be repetitious and promoted through several media channels to be effective even among a targeted group (Baran and Davis 280). St. Louis Master Gardeners are required to volunteer a minimum of 40 hours and complete 10 hours of education annually to remain certified (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Become a Master Gardener”). According the St. Louis Master Gardeners annual report, in 2018 there were 346 active Master Gardeners who contributed a total of 38,100 volunteer hours and delivered 101 Speakers Bureau presentations (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Annual Report 2018” 5). That is a lot of opportunity to communicate with members of the public who are interested in gardening.

Step 4. Images and impressions of the desired behavior must be cultivated through attractive images that are easily recognizable and compelling (Baran and Davis 280). Since gardening is the most popular hobby in the US (Pearlstein and Gehringer 64) and people across many cultures find the sight of flowers pleasing (Hula and Flegr “Introduction”), there are abundant opportunities for the media and change agents to create seductive images and situations.

Step 5. Members of the intended audience must be interested enough to seek information (Baran and Davis 280). Master Gardeners are compelled by the program’s requirements to constantly add to their expertise (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Become a Master Gardener”). Gardening takes considerable knowledge to engage in successfully (Sweetser), so it’s not very difficult to get participants in the nation’s most popular hobby to seek and consume information. Gardening could even increase in popularity due to home trends that include maximizing use of outdoor space (Ballinger “What’s Hot: Trends in the Pipeline for 2018”), gardens that enhance wellness (Ballinger “Elements of a Residential Therapy Garden”), and the trend toward consuming more locally grown food (Ballinger “Agrihoods Feed Buyer Interest With Hip Amenities”).

Step 6. As the audience becomes more informed and engaged, influencing audience priorities and decision making are the next tasks according to social media theory (Baran and Davis 280). The media can be used to transmit messages to encourage the desired behavior and is usually more affordable than using change agents and opinion leaders (Baran and Davis 280). The St. Louis Master Gardener program has an advantage with access to a team of change agents and opinion leaders who volunteer their time and even pay for the tuition to become a Master Gardener (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Become a Master Gardener”).

Step 7. Finally, the audience is exposed to marketing techniques designed to stimulate action (Baran and Davis 280). The actions that the Master Gardener program wants to encourage in the general public are to engage in and enjoy gardening (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Welcome Gardeners”). As evidenced by the activities already mentioned, Master Gardeners provide a lot of free and low-cost advice to make gardening more successful and enjoyable to our audience. Some of the institutions that make use of Master Gardener services provide inspiration to the public with beautiful plantings (St. Louis Master Gardeners “Master Gardeners in Action”). The Master Gardener calendar of activities includes events such as plant sales, tours, holiday celebrations and classes about not only growing plants but using their harvested products (St. Louis Master Gardeners “STLMG Calendar”). Such activities help to stimulate interested persons into starting a garden or expanding their gardening activities.

Social marketing theorists try to make their information/innovation diffusion efforts more effective by requesting feedback from consumers and making changes during a campaign if necessary (Baran and Davis 281). They hope to avoid the pitfalls of information/innovation diffusion theory when applied to audiences that don’t want or don’t understand the innovations they are encouraged to adopt (Baran and Davis 278). Social marketing theory has several weaknesses, for example a campaign can fail to work as planned if there is no two-way communication between an early adopter and a party that resists the innovation (Baran and Davis 281).

I inadvertently found myself demonstrating some effective and ineffective aspects of information/innovation diffusion theory and social marketing theory when my husband and I started installing rainscaping features to prevent damage to our house and yard. As part of my Master Gardener continuing education, I attended a Project Clear presentation by the Metropolitan Sewer District, also known as MSD, on what homeowners can do to help MSD control flooding, sewer backups and poor water quality in our region (Hasenfratz). Social marketing theory assumes a benign information provider primarily interested in the general well-being of the community (Baran and Davis 279). In MSD’s case, if homeowners adopted the practices advocated by MSD, MSD would benefit by having some of the pressure taken off of them while society in general would also benefit by enduring less property damage, reducing some of its own costs and creating a healthier environment for humans and other species. I took on the role of opinion leader when I wrote about rainscaping on the Schnarr’s Hardware Company business blog and my husband and I became early adopters when we started installing rainscaping features (Baran and Davis 277). MSD was successful in convincing me to go through the social marketing theory steps all the way to Step 7, activation (Baran and Davis 279-280).

We encountered resistance to our innovation when our next-door neighbor decided that our rainscaping features were ugly when they were under construction and she called St. Louis County to complain. St. Louis County ordered us to undo our rainscaping but we decided to contest the order because we judged it to be uninformed and arbitrary, and we eventually prevailed (Winkelmann). Once back-and-forth communication with the County decision makers was established, events progressed quickly in our favor. I provided feedback about our experience to MSD so that they can make any changes they deem necessary for future success, as advocated by the hierarchy-of-effects model of social marketing theory (Baran and Davis 281). According to social marketing theorists, MSD might encounter less resistance to the innovations they are promoting by using Step 1 to raise general awareness and Step 4 to make the solutions look more attractive (Baran and Davis 279-280). Perhaps MSD could also use Step 5 to encourage information seeking by demonstrating how homeowners could solve more of their problems and save money with apparently still avant-garde rainscaping techniques (Baran and Davis 280).

4. Explain Cultivation Analysis. How do you see the theory? Be sure to include examples.

Cultivation Analysis is the theory that television presents a view that does not necessarily reflect reality, but because people believe it does, reality changes to conform to television (Baran and Davis 287). The originator of the theory, George Gerbner, worked on projects along with colleagues as they attempted to explain whether perceptions created by television create parallel realities in the lives of viewers (Baran and Davis 288). In the Violence Index they explored the effects of televised violence on real-life aggressive behavior. Their Cultural Indicators Project expanded the social issues studied beyond only violence (Baran and Davis 288).

One of the assumptions made by the researchers in the Cultural Indicators Project was that television has unique qualities that make it exceptionally dominant and worthy of study. Nearly all homes in the US are equipped with television. There are few barriers to the medium’s consumption. For most users, one is not required to be able to read, pay a lot of money, or leave the home to use it. Television combines sound with pictures and appeals to nearly all age groups (Baran and Davis 288-289).

The earliest critics of mass media, the mass society theorists, feared that media would usurp the role of social institutions they considered reassuring and stabilizing such as the family, education, the military, religion, business and politics (Baran and Davis 33). Research by Gerbner in 1990 seems to confirm earlier critics’ predictions. Television, a form of mass media not yet imagined by mass society thinkers, had come to replace the influence of real-life institutions, at least among heavy users (Baran and Davis 290).

In Post-World War II America, many citizens were learning new ways of living and attempting to conform to the ideal lifestyles displayed via the newly prevalent medium of television (Hine 9). Television sets enjoyed rapid adoption between 1950 and the middle of the decade, increasing from 3.1 million sets sold per year to 32 million (Heimann 5). Television sitcom families became role models for people seeking reassurance as they navigated a society that was very different from that of their parents (Hine 10).

Moving from the cities to the suburbs was trendy and caused people to become more isolated from each other as they lived with more actual space between homes and drove their own cars instead of using public transportation (Hine 23). Suburban dwellers were considered malleable and desirable by marketers in part because of their reliance on media for information instead of traditional social institutions such as the family (Hine 24). Media based authorities assumed a parental role as they advised the nation on how to manage and enjoy life (Hine 27).

Some designers of physical spaces recognized that a vision seen on a screen was something that many movie and television viewers wanted to experience for themselves. Architect Morris Lapidus designed outrageous buildings designed to appeal to tastes derived from Hollywood rather than elite classic architecture. Disneyland the theme park was a companion piece to Disneyland the TV show, and was deliberately designed to give visitors an experience that reflected the expectations developed through television viewing (Hine 150-152). The works of Walt Disney and Morris Lapidus are examples of yet another cultivation analysis premise that appears to be correct – Gerbner’s 3 Bs of Television, “the idea that television blurs, blends and bends reality” (Baran and Davis 290, 292).

Works Cited

Attractions of America. “Top 10 Tourist Attractions in St. Louis, Missouri.” AttractionsofAmerica.Com, 2012-2017, https://www.attractionsofamerica.com/attractions/top-10-tourist-attractions-in-st-louis-missouri.php. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Ballinger, Barbara. REALTOR Magazine, “Home & Design.” National Association of Realtors, 2019. magazine.realtor/home-and-design. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Baran, Stanley J. and Dennis K. Davis. Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future. Seventh Edition. CENGAGE Learning, 2015.

Hasenfratz, Carolyn. “MSD’s Project Clear and Our Local Water Issues.” Schnarr’s Hardware Company, 2017, schnarrsblog.com/msds-project-clear-and-our-local-water-issues/. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Heimann, Jim. The Golden Age of Advertising – the 50s. Taschen, 2005.

Hine, Thomas. Populuxe: From Tailfins and TV Dinners To Barbie Dolls and Fallout Shelters. MJF Books, 1986 and 1999.

Hula, Martin, and Jaroslav Flegr. “What flowers do we like? The influence of shape and color on the rating of flower beauty.” PeerJ vol. 4 e2106. 7 Jun. 2016, doi:10.7717/peerj.2106. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Missouri Botanical Garden. http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/plant-science/plant-science/research.aspx. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Pearlstein, Karen, and George Gehringer. “Indoors Out/Outdoors In.” Casual Living, vol. 51, no. 5, May 2011, pp. 64-66. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=60680069&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 October 2019.

St. Louis Master Gardeners, 2018-2019, stlmg.org/. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Sweetser, Robin, “10 Tips For Beginner Gardeners: Things To Consider When Starting A
Vegetable Garden.” Yankee Publishing, Inc, 2019, www.almanac.com/news/gardening/gardening-advice/10-tips-beginner-gardeners. Accessed 15 October 2019.

University of Missouri Extension, “Pride Points.” Curators of the University of Missouri, 1993 to 2019, http://extension.missouri.edu/about/pride-points.aspx. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Winkelmann, Carolyn Hasenfratz. “Drainage Problems Are Bringing Tom and Me To Court.” Carolyn Hasenfratz Design, 2019, www.chasenfratz.com/wp/drainage-problems-are-bringing-tom-and-i-to-court/. Accessed 15 October 2019.

Further reading: If you like the topics I wrote about above, you might enjoy more resources that I found but did not use.

Gardening for Beginners: 11 Tips for a Successful Start

2018 Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features

Human ethology

Drainage Problems Are Bringing Tom and Me To Court

Conservation, Gardening, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Drainage Problems Are Bringing Tom and Me To Court
by Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann

In the spring of 2018, before Tom and I were married and I wasn’t yet living at his house, I started making a garden plan and beginning work on what would become our garden. I could see right away that drainage was a big problem in his yard and the garden plan would need to address it. Tom and I were also very concerned about the state of his basement. There were numerous large cracks and a couple of small rivers that ran across the floor every time it rained. Shortly after our marriage in August of 2018, we hired an engineer to tell us how serious the problems were and what should be done about them. The engineer confirmed our opinion that we needed to keep water away from the the house foundation and seal the cracks. He said this would probably be enough repair if we fixed the drainage problems on the outside of the house. If it got worse, we might need about $10,000.00 worth of pier work. We had the cracks fixed and next went to work on fixing the drainage issues.



Here are three photos of cracks in Tom’s basement that I took on July 29, 2019. The left photo shows a repair that was done some time before I knew Tom. The two right photos are repairs that were done in September 2018.

The garden plan I came up with is mostly my idea and I take responsibility for it. I based my plan on the following sources of information:

1. 16 years of personal experience gardening.

2. Completion of training to be a St. Louis and Missouri certified Master Gardener in 2016. (Link to photo of certificate). I have kept my certification current which involves at least 10 hours of continuing education and 40 hours of volunteer work per year.

3. I have attended workshops put on by MSD to learn proper techniques for managing stormwater runoff. Here is an article I wrote after one of the sessions I attended – MSD’s Project Clear and Our Local Water Issues

Relevant quotes from the MSD web page on Rainscaping (link here):

  • “Stormwater runoff is created by hard surfaces that cannot absorb water, like concrete, the footprint of a house, and compacted soils.”
  • “This (rainscaping) can be done through any combination of plantings, water features, catch basins, and permeable pavement, among other activities.”
  • “In a properly designed rain garden, water will soak into the ground within a day or two, long before mosquitoes have the opportunity to breed. They can be designed to attract the kinds of insects and wildlife that feed off mosquitoes, reducing their numbers around your property. Rain gardens can also help eliminate yard ponding, in which water can pool long enough for mosquitoes to multiply.”
  • “A rain garden gives water runoff a beneficial and safe place to go, helping to keep it away from your foundation where water problems can occur. It can also help reduce or eliminate water ponding on your property. Since rain gardens reduce the amount of stormwater entering the sewer system, they can help prevent basement backups and sewer overflows.”

4. I have read over the suggestions for controlling water runoff on the Missouri Botanical Garden web site.

Rainscaping practices

Relevant quotes:

    • “Plant a rain garden or develop a swale to help retain water in the soil and prevent runoff.”
    • “Incorporate rainscaping features such to manage stormwater.”

 

Here are the rainscaping features we have added so far:

    • Rainwater harvesting – We have installed two rain barrels so far.
    • Rock weirs – I have installed two of them at the Southeast corner of the property so that if there is any runoff that overtops the dry well at the end of the rain garden, soil will not be lost into the street.
    • Bioswale/Rain Garden – I have made several of these and am in the process of planting them with rainscaping plants to absorb more of the rainwater than the clay soil can currently absorb. Quantities and names of rain garden plants that I have added:
    • Lawn alternatives – we are allowing four different kinds of water-loving groundcover grow in place of turfgrass in parts of the lawn close to areas that collect water.
    • Soil amendments and mulching – we have added 13 cubic yards of soil (that’s a whole dump truck load) from St. Louis Compost that is 50% compost to improve the water absorption ability of our clay soil. So far we have added half a pickup truck bed full of mulch with more to come.

5. I read over the St. Louis County guidelines for land disturbance. We are within the guidelines because we are disturbing less than 30 square yards, less than 2000 square feet, are doing residential landscaping in a one family dwelling and have provided safeguards against erosion (the dry well and rock weirs).

6. I consulted with the owner of a landscaping company that I worked for part time for two years doing consulting and labor on client’s properties.

Here are some pictures that document what the yard looked like before we started working on it:



North West and North areas of our yard on March 27, 2018 showing that we had problems with standing water before I started any rainscaping. Also note that the neighbor’s yard accumulated standing water before I did any rainscaping. Here is a link to the shared photos to prove the date I took the pictures:
Tom’s Yard March 2018

 



The image on the left of this pair shows water collecting around the house foundation on March 27, 2018. The right photo shows water collecting around the house foundation on November 1, 2018. Here is a link to the shared photos to prove the date I took the picture on the right:
Tom’s Yard November 2018

 



Here is a graphic that shows where the neighbor’s water discharge pipes are located (red) and the area of our yard that was prone to collect water (blue) before I started rainscaping.

Yes I drew on the satellite picture where the neighbor’s drainpipes are and where the water collecting areas were. Don’t just take my word for it. Here are some videos showing the water flow happening in real time during a rainstorm. These videos were shot on July 1, 2019.

https://youtu.be/UIGlDAK3McY – the two back downspouts in the neighbor’s backyard are shown. I don’t know if you can tell from the video, but in addition to the drainpipes being aimed at our yard, the neighbor’s yard is sloped downward to drain directly into our backyard.

https://youtu.be/usO0kYKr7Ko – this video shows how the front drainage pipe is aimed right at our driveway. We had to have our driveway replaced in November of 2018 due to cracks and damage caused by years of this water flowing over it and freezing and thawing in the cracks.

Here is a link to photos I took on November 1, 2018 showing new driveway and other pictures around the house foundations. November 1, 2018

https://youtu.be/Up2nHlhyf_c – here is a video showing how wet the backyard gets and how I connected the neighbor’s low spot to ours to faciliate drainage of her yard and to avoid interrupting the flow from one yard to another.



These photos were both taken on July 1, 2019. As you can see, the area was dry before it rained. Here is a link to the photos I took on July 1 before and after it rained so you can verify the date and that the photos were taken on the same day and that the rain garden areas do drain in between rains like they are designed to. Also note that the neighbor’s yard and our yard drain better than they did before I did any rainscaping work and the areas of standing water are smaller than they were on the March 27, 2018 photos. As I get more plants in the bioswales and rain gardens and the existing plants get bigger and the soil continues to improve, the ground will absorb water even faster in the future. As I add plants I add humus and the plant roots penetrate the clay below to facilitate drainage. The 235 plants I already have are doing a good job. More are coming, but it’s not easy to get anything to grow in clay and you can’t do transplants into clay and expect them to live during the hottest time of summer. July 1, 2018

My garden plan was designed to help alleviate the following problems:

1. Soil is almost all clay and absorbs very little water.

2. Clay soil not only resists absorbing water, it expands and shrinks in wet and dry weather causing cracking in the foundation.

3. The existing soil cannot absorb the runoff from our own house. In addition, the majority of the drainage from the neighbor’s property to the west is directed onto our property so that we not only have our runoff to deal with, we have most of hers too.

4. Our back patio and back sidewalk were tilted toward the foundation directing water right into the cracks and making them worse. In addition, since they were solid concrete they inhibited water from being naturally absorbed into the soil.

I decided to draw up a plan that addressed these issues and employed rainscaping techniques because my conscience will not allow me to direct water right into the storm sewers when I know that MSD is spending billions of dollars to try to alleviate flooding in our area caused by too much storm runoff AND I’m well aware of how to manage our own storm water responsibly and avoid contributing to flooding and poor water quality downstream from us. How much damage has been done across the Midwest this spring and summer by floods? We’re trying to deal with our excess storm water in a way which does not just push the problem onto someone else. I know most people don’t take our neighbors downstream from us into consideration when making landscaping choices but we are not those kind of people.

Here is a 3 page PDF file showing the first citation, the summons to go to court, and the second citation. We took care of the invasive honeysuckle within two weeks, and the bricks before sundown the next day. Please note the dates of these three documents – May 20, June 25 and July 23. I am confused about why we have to go to court when we fixed the problems mentioned in the first citation in the time limit set by the county. The court summons was issued on June 25 when the work was completed by May 31 (to clarify, the bricks were fixed by sundown May 4 and the invasive honeysuckle trimmings by May 31 as required in the first citation). Furthermore, I also don’t understand why we got another citation before even having the court date yet.

Here in summary here are the reasons why I do not believe we deserve any citations or fines from St. Louis County:

    • The next door neighbor who called the county to say she doesn’t like our garden admitted to me that she called because she thinks it’s ugly, not because it was causing her any problems. She revealed this after I offered her some of the dirt we bought from St. Louis Compost to help her raise her wet spot (which existed before our rainscaping as you have seen) and some premium grass seed with really long roots to help absorb water. You can’t get this grass in big box stores, the hybrid is only sold in select garden centers. I couldn’t understand why she was refusing and she said she just thought our garden was ugly. Her yard is much uglier in my opinion and one of the reasons I’ve planted plants along the fence is to hide the view of her yard. You can see from the videos that her yard is full of invasive weeds, concrete, trash cans, brush piles, yard tools and the like.



Ugly is kind of in the eye of the beholder isn’t it? This photo was taken on July 30, 2019. On the left is a very nice Assumption Lily in our neighbor’s yard with invasive weeds (Mimosa, Japanese Honeysuckle) around it. On the right we have an unplanted area on our side of the fence in the foreground and an herb garden barely begun behind it. So far we’re growing in this section Bronze Fennel, Garlic Chives, Peppermint and Korean Hyssop and protecting the soil in the unplanted areas with mulch. Which side is uglier? If different people were to give different answers it would not surprise me.

    • We could have sued this neighbor for ruining our old driveway. We didn’t do this because we thought peaceful relations with neighbors were more important. This is what we get in thanks for that. I never spoke to her until I went over to ask her why she called the county on us instead of just asking us to fix what she didn’t like. It’s not like I went out of my way to cause problems with her. My computer desk faces her back yard and I’ve observed her glaring at me before through the window but since we never spoke I had no idea what her problem was.

 

    • We have improved the drainage in her yard and the neighbor on the other side of us no longer has our runoff going over his driveway, therefore we have helped the lifespan of his driveway and possibly saved him thousands of dollars. (We know how much it costs because we just got one.) We disagree that we have caused a drainage nuisance to our neighbors, rather we have provided a solution to an existing problem and both of their properties have been helped at no cost to them.

 

    • Water does not stay in the rain garden areas long enough to grow mosquito larvae so we don’t agree that we have caused a nuisance there either. As you can see from the photos I showed you, we already had a worse standing water problem BEFORE the rain garden was started. Some breeds of mosquitoes can breed in as little as a teaspoon of water. You can see from the photos that we had a lot more than a teaspoon of standing water BEFORE I started the garden. It also hung around a lot longer than one or two days. As a precaution I also treat the water when it occurs with BTI (Bacillus thuringiensis serotype israelensis) just in case we have more than a normal amount of rain for a few days. This makes our yard and neighborhood SAFER from mosquitoes than before we did anything – therefore we believe we should receive commendations for what we have done, not citations. Since we have improved the existing situation, we don’t agree that we have created a nuisance.



Here are three areas of the rain garden that I consider finished or nearly so. These photos were taken July 30, 2019. They have been planted with plants that can take varying water levels and clay soil. Their roots improve water penetration into the ground. I also added some better soil and mulch after planting. As you can see there is no standing water, even though it rained at least three times yesterday.

    • The day before we received our first notice from the county, (May 2) I was out in the front yard working and I saw a St. Louis County work truck slow down in front of our house. The driver stared me down and gave me a foul look. She stepped on the gas and sped off. She didn’t even stop the truck all the way. If this is what passes as an inspection it’s no wonder the inspectors don’t understand the drainage situation and how the rain garden fixed most of it (still have to work out the driveway pipe situation so our new driveway doesn’t get ruined – was hoping to do it peacefully but quickly losing hope for that.) Note that the first inspection document says the yard was inspected on or around May 20, but the day we actually got the citation on our door was on May 3. (Strangely enough, on a Friday, the only day of the week we are both gone all day at the same time, and also the day after the county truck came by – suspicious enough behavior that I made a note of the date.) If everything is above board, why is stealth necessary? How do the inspectors know if there is standing water if they “inspect” on May 2 or 3 but claim it’s really May 20, when we go through long periods when it rains nearly every day? If the inspectors make a point of only coming on days when it rains or are not truthful about what days they come of course they can make claims that are misleading (if that’s what they are trying to do). Yesterday (July 29) it rained three times. There will probably be a time when we won’t have any standing water even during rain – when our soil is better. Remember we were starting with clay – we did not strip off good soil and cause these problems, the problems were decades in the making and started when these homes were built (in the 1950s). We paid over $350.00 to St. Louis Compost to ADD good soil.



Improving our soil. From left to right: Taking delivery of a full dump truck of 50% compost soil from St. Louis Compost on May 2. A full dump truck load is 13 cubic yards. 2nd photo – Tom spreading soil over where the old concrete patio was on May 6. We took out the concrete patio to make the ground more permeable so there is less standing water. Soil and mulch will be here until we are ready to install a new patio. It will be made of permeable pavers or mulch so we don’t bring back the previous drainage problems. 3rd photo – Picking up mulch in a rented pickup truck. Mulch makes soil drain better and protects it from erosion and compaction.

    • The large hole next to the future patio will become our new pond and waterfall area. We will stick to the county determined limit of 24″ of depth. It will have a liner, filter, aquatic plantings, two waterfalls and all the bells and whistles. We wish it was done already too. It takes time and money to build. For example I could have been working on that the last couple of days but so far I have spent 9 hours working on a defense for our court date and I’m not done yet. Plus there is the time we have to actually go. That’s a lot of hours that we aren’t getting useful work done. Edit: total time I spent on defending us in court was 17.4 hours.

 

    • The inspectors, if they come at all, seem to only come by when we aren’t home. Our neighbor can easily tell when we aren’t home and can tip them off. Therefore they can’t ask us questions and we can’t explain. That makes me suspicious about what is really going on. Yes completing our garden plan takes time. I don’t know of any construction sites that look good during the whole project. If construction sites had to be shut down every time it rained and there was a puddle or it looked ugly to someone nothing would ever get done. I think we are being treated unfairly and unethically and are not guilty of any violations. I’m considering setting up a webcam to see what the county people look at in our yard assuming they come at all so that we can defend ourselves more effectively. Should I spend this money on more garden improvements or more surveillance technology? Which will protect us more from fines and having to go to court? Questions I’m asking myself.

We don’t mind dealing with our neighbor’s runoff responsibly when she won’t, because the most important thing is that it gets done, but I think it’s wrong for us to be punished for it. When I talked to her to try to work out what she was really upset about she complained that our garden was ugly, that she had water in her basement, and her property taxes were too high. I can do something about making the garden less “ugly”, but I can’t do anything about her basement or property taxes. I don’t see why we should be punished for those things. We had the same problems in our basement and instead of attacking her we just fixed it and now we are being dragged into court for it. I have a co-worker who lives a few houses away and has water in his basement too. The whole neighborhood probably does because the whole neighborhood is built on clay. We’re trying to do something proactive and neighborly about it.

Here is a link to this document online if you ever want to refer to it and follow the live links:
http://www.chasenfratz.com/wp/drainage-problems-are-bringing-tom-and-i-to-court/

If we have not already addressed all the court’s concerns please inform us of how you would like us to proceed in order not to be fined. We’d rather spend the money on garden and property improvements. We still have a lot to do. My garden plan was intended to be a multi-year project. Phase 1 was expected to take three years. The more times we have to stop and go to court the longer it will take.

Update July 31, 2019

Last night in court the charges against us were dismissed. As for the second citation from July 23, it appears that our neighbor waited until we were on vacation and there was a day with a lot of storms to call the county inspector again and say there was standing water in our yard. Of course there is when she has directed nearly all her runoff to our yard. I thought of filling the bioswale areas that didn’t have plants in them yet with mulch so this didn’t happen when we were gone, but I wanted to be home when I tried this in case the storm water pushed the mulch around too much and made dams that would cause worse problems. I did expect her to try something when we were on vacation but I’m surprised the county inspectors go along with it and don’t see what she has done to us by directing her runoff to our yard. The county is displeased that we interrupted the flow of water from her yard to ours, but her entire yard is a barrier to water flow. You can see from the satellite photo that it is concrete from one end of the yard to the other, and we got taken to court for about 10 bricks in a raised bed that took 10 minutes (or less) to remove. Well the inspector was also on vacation last night, so the county inspector helping out in court last night gave me his email address so I forwarded the this article to him. I had no way of contacting him before to explain what is going on. I hope after this he will just talk to us. In the meantime, I have no problem with putting some mulch in the bioswales that don’t yet have plants and don’t yet absorb water very well. They would still be porous and function as designed until I can get more plants in. It will take a little time for new mulch to get “sticky” and “spongy” and absorb water well so I’ll need to keep a close eye on it.

Update August 15, 2019

081519

This was left on our door August 15. This is promising. I have a specific person I can contact with a phone number. I’m going to call him tomorrow morning. How do you think the conversation will go? Any predictions? I’ll let you know what happens!

Update August 19, 2019

I called and left a message for Anthony V. and he called me back within an hour or two. He sounds like a great guy, nice and reasonable and professional like the other inspector who helped us out in court on July 31st. At first he was talking to me about a different property and then he remembered which was the right property and told me I have to fill in the rain garden. It’s clear he didn’t read the article above that I emailed to him, or if he did he didn’t remember it. I explained to him the drainage issues the rain garden was designed to repair. I explained the damage to our house and driveway and how we had already spent thousands and were trying to prevent spending thousands more. I explained how the neighbor’s runoff is directed into our yard. I asked him to email to me a copy of the St. Louis County policy on rain gardens so that I could see what I was in violation of because I know of many rain gardens in St. Louis County and some of them are huge and they don’t seem to be a problem. He said that was covered under the land disturbance guidelines and I told him I had read those and I was following the restrictions in there. (I have a link to the Land Disturbance Guidelines above). He said he’d talk to his supervisor and get back to me. I missed his next voicemail which was not too long after and I gave him a return voicemail message so we are playing phone tag. I don’t know what the message is other than to call him. I gave him my email address so he can email me the statute I’m violating (assuming  there is one). If I’m going to fight it in court I need to know what it is first! I’m very glad we can communicate instead of Tom and I just finding “nastygrams” saying see you in court that are dropped off when we aren’t home.

Before we got off the phone, I asked him how to report the neighbor’s drainage pipes discharging onto our property. He said to report any that are closer than 10 ft to the main office. So I measured the four pipes in question and there are two closer than 10 feet. I opened my measuring tape to 10 feet and took these pictures to illustrate.

image_pairs_pipes

I reported to the Neighborhood Services main office. I know it seems incredibly stupid and petty to be measuring the neighbor’s pipes and reporting how close they are. This is what I’m forced to do because our neighbor was not content to let us deal with her excess stormwater at no cost to her. She is the one who involved the County, so now they are involved. I would have much preferred to not involve the government and waste taxpayer’s money, I’m sure they have much more important things to do. I’ll let you know what happens!
https://stlouisco.com/Property-and-Roads/Neighborhood-Services

Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 18.5 hours

Update August 20, 2019

Here is the answer I got from St. Louis County about the neighbor’s pipes being too close:

“St Louis County has no jurisdiction in Marlborough you will have to contact Marlborough concerning this matter. St Louis County only covers unincorporated areas .”

I thought we were in an unincorporated area, but if we are not, why is St. Louis County hassling us about our garden? Why is St. Louis County in charge one day and not the next day? When I have time, I’ll put in calls to Anthony, St. Louis County main office at the County and Marlborough City Hall and see where that goes.

Turns out don’t need to the above that just yet – response from County is we are unincorporated, St. Louis County has jurisdiction, and the complaint has been entered.

A little later I got a voice mail message from Anthony saying he talked to his supervisor and we have to get rid of the rain garden. I left a phone message for him asking him to send me a copy of the specific law we are violating and the name, phone number and email address of his supervisor. That’s the second time I requested a copy of the specific law. I have searched for things like “rain gardens St. Louis County guidelines” and “rain gardens St. Louis County restrictions” and I have found nothing.

Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 19.5 hours

Update August 23, 2019

Over the last couple of days I have contacted a lot of environmental organizations who might have in interest in this process and I asked them for advice and also if they have heard anything about rain gardens being illegal in St. Louis County. So far no one has let me know that they have heard it’s illegal. Some people are still looking for information or people for me to contact. I’m following up on contacts people have given me. So far the most specific advice is to request a copy of the actual law they think I am breaking. I have requested that twice this week and still don’t have it. I have asked the inspector I’ve been dealing with to also send me the name and contact information of his supervisor. I don’t have that yet either. He has my email address, I have given it to him at least twice, once by phone and once by email.

I decided to use the form available on the St. Louis County web site for public works since I know it works from when I reported the neighbor’s pipes the other day. It’s here: https://stlouisco.com/Property-and-Roads/Neighborhood-Services/Question-or-Complaint

Here is a copy of my message:

“Hi, inspector Anthony Vecchio left a notice on my door on August 15 saying he wanted to talk to me about our property at 7405 Rockwood Drive. I have spoken to him on the phone and he says that his supervisor told him that I have to get rid of my rain garden. I have not been able to find any information online about what my rain garden is violating. He said it was covered by the Guidelines for Land Disturbance which I have read and I haven’t been able to find anything in that document that we are violating. I asked him twice earlier this week for the specific law and I also asked him for the name and contact information for his supervisor. I have not received either yet.

I have contacted a great number of environmental organizations in the area for advice. I have also contacted MSD, Project Clear and Missouri Botanical Garden since they advocate for building rain gardens and I know that MSD has spent a lot of money testing and promoting rain gardens. What I have heard back so far is that they don’t know anything about rain gardens being illegal and I should request a copy of the specific statute that they are concerned with. I have requested that twice, on Tuesday and Wednesday and I don’t have it yet. I’ve also requested the name and contact information of the supervisor of Anthony Vecchio and I have not been provided with that information yet. Can you please send me those items ASAP? Thank you very much for your time!”

It rained a lot on Wednesday evening (Aug. 21), enough to necessitate the City of Brentwood (where I used to live and still own a condo) sending me flash flood warnings on my phone and in my email. I checked the rain gardens and bioswales to see how they were draining. They did look like they were probably on track to drain within 1 to 2 days if it didn’t rain again, but I realized I needed to take action because Tom and I are both going to be at work on Friday and I thought it likely that on that day we would get another inspection to try to catch us out and accuse us of having stagnant water. The last time I got a flash flood notice (July 22 when we were in Yellowstone National Park) we got another citation (see the July 23 document in the PDF file linked above) the day after. AND it looked like it was going to rain again. I can’t skip work to intercept the inspectors and try to explain the situation so I did my best to give the rain gardens a prophylactic treatment just in case.

First I put BTI in all the areas where water was present on August 22 (the day after the heavy rain)  as a safeguard against mosquitoes. This biological control needs to be reapplied every couple of weeks and these areas have been bone dry for awhile so I wanted to re-innoculate. The BTI is the brown crumbles floating on the surface.

Small rain garden with bioswales leading into it and out of it into the grass.
This area tends to collect water when it rains because I had to make it big enough to completely drain the wet spot on the neighbor’s side of the fence since the county has made us responsible for the runoff from the yard to the West. I have planted some water loving plants on the edge and more are coming to help dry this area faster. That has to wait until the weather is cool enough for transplants. Hopefully won’t be too long.

The next thing I did to speed up the drying in spots like the above was to weed along the edges so that more sunlight can get to it when the sun does come back out. I also made the bioswale that drains it a bit bigger to draw more water out into the grass.

Until I can get more transplants in, I have to make the clay soil more permeable. I used a metal pole to drive holes into the bottoms of the bioswales and rain gardens. Then I sprinkled in some organic matter in the form of wood chip mulch and dried up plant debris that we use as mulch. I kept adding organic matter until the water disappeared. Unfortunately it started to rain again before I could finish and the water level went up again, temporarily. The rain fell slowly enough that I didn’t inadvertently cause dams where I didn’t want them. In time micro-organisms and fungi will help the mulch stick together and be more sponge-like.

This picture was taken after poking holes and applying BTI, but before adding mulch and organic matter. In the spriing I created meanders in the bottom of this part of the rain garden to slow the water further. Meandering streams run more slowly and deposit more silt than straight streams. Kind of fun to make this happen in miniature!
This picture was taken after poking holes and applying BTI, but before adding mulch and organic matter. In the spring I created meanders in the bottom of this part of the rain garden to slow the water further. Meandering streams run more slowly and deposit more silt than straight streams. Kind of fun to make this happen in miniature!

I can speed the process up some by adding organic fertilizer that contains nitrogen and maybe an innoculation of untilled mature soil or a product designed to accelerate compost. When it dries out a little I’ll try this. I have some blood meal and a really good product called Love Your Soil by Jonathan Green that helps loosen bad soil. I did this process once before in late spring or early summer and it helped a great deal. Over time, as I drive in more holes the plants will have more soft spots to push roots into and break up the clay. Some of the native plants I’m putting in are adapted to penetrating clay with their roots alone which can only help.

Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 25 hours

Here is some correspondence that will catch you up on where we are today:

August 23rd, 2019, Anthony Vecchio to me

Mrs. Winklemann,

In regards to your inquiry regarding the notice of violation you received for the trenches dug around your property, the code violation specified is listed on the notice that was posted on your door and mailed to you. No grade may be altered in a way that prevents the natural flow of water or causes stagnant water theron. Should you have any further questions, please contact my supervisor Mr. John Gieler. He may be reached by calling 615-4100 where you can be directed to his extension.

Sincerely,

Anthony Vecchio
Inspector

August 23rd, 2019, Me to Anthony Vecchio

Mr. Vecchio,

We have not prevented the flow of water or caused stagnant water. Rather we have prevented standing water and facilitated the flow of water from one property to the next. The water flows better than before, therefore we have not made the problem worse or created it. If we fill in the rain garden the problems that you think we caused will come back and then we’ll get in trouble for that. The evidence is in the document I sent you on July 31. Here it is again:

http://www.chasenfratz.com/wp/drainage-problems-are-bringing-tom-and-i-to-court/

If you have not done so, please read it, look at the pictures and watch the videos. Then you will understand what is going on. Then please send me the rules I am violating. It’s not in the Land Disturbance Document. There is nothing in there that says you can’t have a rain garden, there is nothing in there that says you can’t fix existing problems with standing water and there is nothing in there that says you can’t make the water flow better and stop puddling in the neighbor’s yard. It does not say you can’t capture your runoff to keep it from going on your neighbor’s driveway so it doesn’t buckle like ours did. What you are saying we did is what it was like BEFORE we started fixing it.

If you send me the email of your supervisor I will send him a link to it also. I got his name from someone else at the county and I have his phone number. I can’t call him now because I am at work. I have contacted him on Facebook and LinkedIn in the meantime. I will call him Monday if needed. We are not willing to go back to having a wet basement and the house falling in. There are cracks upstairs that have not gotten worse since we fixed the drainage problems. We put a piece of tape at the end of one of the cracks to check. We care a lot about keeping our house erect and intact and we like the dry basement. I don’t think it’s legal to occupy a house falling in either. We would be negligent if we did not fix it.

Thank you very much,
Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann

 

This is the site of the future pond. I've been filling it in with mulch between rains until we get it done. This makes more work for us and makes it take longer to get done, but it's what we have to do. Does every construction site in St. Louis County have to fill in every puddle between rains, even if they dry up in a day or two? This photo was taken on August 25, about 24 hours ago. It's rained three times since then. If it's not dry right now, about an hour after the rain stopped, should we have to go to court again? What do you think?
This is the site of the future pond. I’ve been filling it in with mulch between rains until we get it done. This makes more work for us and makes it take longer to get done, but it’s what we have to do. Does every construction site in St. Louis County have to fill in every puddle between rains, even if they dry up in a day or two? This photo was taken on August 25, about 24 hours ago. It’s rained three times since then. If it’s not dry right now, about an hour after the rain stopped, should we have to go to court again? What do you think?

August 26th, 2019, John L. Geiler to me

Mrs. Winkelmann,

I have contacted the County prosecutors and we will refrain from pressing charges at this time. The ordinance number that you have not been looking at is:

SLCRO 1110.507.1 General. Drainage of roofs, paved areas, yards and courts, and other open areas on the premises shall not be modified or altered to discharge in a manner that creates a public nuisance.

Should a complaint come in about a public nuisance created by the ditches you’ve dug in your husband’s yard we will be required by law to re-issue the NOV and seek compliance. If you want to create a “rain garden” at some time in the future, and the necessary changes involved with that process are in violation of County ordinances, you will need to seek a special use permit or a zoning variance. Those actions can be taken by visiting the Public Works office in Clayton and presenting plans for your installation.

John L. Geiler
Assistant Chief Residential Inspector
St. Louis County Public Works
Code Enforcement
(314) 615-4191

August 26th, 2019, Me to John L. Geiler

Hi, thank you very much for your reply. I read the ordinance many times. The neighbor’s yard has drained completely every time it rains since May 3. (my edit – that’s the day after her complaint and therefore the day I started checking after each and every rain). Her yard used to collect water as ours did BEFORE I did anything. She told me the reason she complained is that she thought it was ugly. I will concede that most construction sites are ugly when they are in progress.

She is the one who caused a nuisance for US. It’s actually the other way around according to the law you cited. This blog post will explain. I couldn’t get Anthony to look at it as far as I know. Mike looked at it and he understood it. That’s why the charges were dismissed.

http://www.chasenfratz.com/wp/drainage-problems-are-bringing-tom-and-i-to-court/

I’m sure you are very busy today with the flash floods and all. Please look at it when you have time. If someone would just read it and look at the pictures and watch the videos they would understand the situation. At any time you are welcome to make an appt. with me and I’ll show you around personally.

I hope someone is addressing my complaint about her pipes discharging water into our yard and contributing to the destruction of the foundation of our house. There are two that are closer than 10 feet.

Thank you,
Carolyn

Here are some pictures of cracks in our bedroom that the engineer we hired told us were caused by the foundation shifting from bad drainage. We put that piece of tape on one of them last winter to see if our rainscaping had halted the damage or not. No movement since!
Here are some pictures of cracks in our bedroom that the engineer we hired told us were caused by the foundation shifting from bad drainage. We put that piece of tape on one of them last winter to see if our rainscaping had halted the damage or not. No movement since! These photos were taken on 08/25/19.

Total time I’ve spent up to this point on our defense: 27.81 hours