The Blanchard River Water Partnership recently teamed up with the Nature Conservancy for a project to help reduce the flooding in Findlay.
For the past couple of days, the two organizations have been hard at work planting trees for their new wetland project in Findlay. With the help of the University of Findlay students and volunteers from both the Watershed Partnership board and the Nature Conservancy they successfully planted a little over 2,000 trees along seven acres of township road 89.
“It’s been actually pretty incredible to just witness the amount of work that’s been done,” said Lauren Sandhu, Blanchard Watershed Partnership Coordinator. “We didn’t know if we’d be able to get that amount of work done over the last three days.”
For years the area along township road 89 has been used for planting corn, but problems have arisen as this area continued to flood from the surrounding Blanchard River. And that is why the organizations thought this would be the perfect location for their project.
“By converting this back into a floodplain wetland- type environment, it will really help with those flood mitigation efforts,” said Sandhu. “So this area will be able to hold a lot more water than it previously would.”
“It’s really important to be out here,” said Haley Ganger, a University of Findlay student volunteer. “We’re giving back to nature and helping the agriculture field as well because they kind of go hand in hand together.”
This project was made possible through the Clean Water Act 319 federal grant and through the help of the Hancock County Commissioners who allowed them to use this land for the project. This is one of several projects throughout Ohio that have received funding for wetland restoration.
Governor Mike DeWine's new initiative is also helping projects just like these.
“With the new H2Ohio initiative that came out wetland restoration projects like this are going to be more commonplace in the upcoming years,” said Sandhu.
