Ground Breaks on Rain Garden at Harrisville Harbor

The Alcona High School environmental science class began work on a project they have discussed during class.

They took data around the Harrisville Harbor and discovered pollutants that are potentially dangerous to Lake Huron, so they decided to build a rain garden.

“It’s a natural filtration system, and it’s all supposed to be about environmental protection of Lake Huron,” said Kathrin Luce, a science teacher at Alcona High School.

The decision to build a rain garden was completely driven by the students, and Luce applauded their forward thinking.

“They were very scientific about it, which is great because everything we’re doing in this garden, we’re linking back to the class, so we’re linking it back to biodiversity, and ecosystems, and pollutant issues to the water cycle, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, all that good stuff we’re talking about in class, they are applying here as well,” she said.

The rain garden was built for future environmental science classes at Alcona High School to tend to, study, and learn from.

“It was really awesome to be able to help decide what plants and the layout and give advice on things that might or might not be good for this setting, yeah, it’s really cool,” said Abby Kozlow, a recent graduate of Alcona High School.

Being in an area where maritime life thrives in Lake Huron, keeping that environment safe was of the utmost importance.

“Anything that runs off from the parking lot won’t make its way all the way into the lake, and it hopefully it’ll be a little bit less, cause despite it being as environmentally friendly as possible, there’s only so many things that you can do to make sure that the chemicals don’t get into the water,” said Kozlow.

The students were out at the harbor from 9 am to 1:30 pm on Tuesday.