Soak Up The Rain Silver Lake (completed)

The Soak Up The Rain Silver Lake project, which began with a $10,000 grant from New Hampshire DES as part of their “Soak Up the Rain” program, as well as an additional $7,750 grant from The Monadnock Conservancy, is complete. The purpose of Soak Up The Rain was to help property owners around Silver Lake provide simple solutions to protect the lake’s high quality from pollution carried in stormwater run-off. (For quick access to the simple solutions, click here. And for a great information sheet on planning a DIY project, see http://soaknh.org/projects/start-project/)

This partnership of the SLLT, NH DES and Monadnock Conservancy targeted several projects, including adding infiltration steps and implementing erosion mitigations at the boat launch area, each reimbursing on average $500 to $1,000.

Though the Soak Up the Rain project and reimbursements are now complete, nearly every property owner around the lake has a potential stormwater problem that can be solved with rain barrels that collect water from gutters, with rain gardens or plantings at the base of steep slopes to capture flowing stormwater, or with other solutions which are easy to implement.

See NH DES’s excellent website at soaknh.org to learn more about this grant program and DES’s program to protect and restore clean water in New Hampshire waterways.

The Soak Up The Rain website has some excellent resources for do-it-yourselfers, who are encouraged to use the fact sheets listed below to complete their Soak Up the Rain projects. Each fact sheet includes a list of recommended materials and equipment as well as step-by-step instructions for installation. See the illustrations and links below: