Simple Green Building Practices
Caring for the health of
our environment is important to Advanced Surveys, Inc.
ASI provides staff the opportunity to serve on multiple
environmental teams and commissions within our project area.
There are many ways that you can help the local environment
whether you are building a new home or have an existing home and
just want to help make a difference.
One of the big environmental focuses of our area is the
amount
which when combined with our neighbors is causing a large amount of
the pollutants going into the
If you are building a new structure, let Advanced
Surveys help you determine some ways that you may be able to reduce
pollutants such as sediment and nitrogen.
As current homeowner, there are many ways that we can help improve our local environment. Some of the ways are simple, such as the elimination or reduction of fertilizers on your lawn.
The following are a couple of documents created by the State of Maryland and also the Federal Government. Both of the documents require the use of Adobe Reader. If you do not have this, please go to ADOBE and download Adobe Reader before clicking on these images.
Rain Barrels are a simple way to collect water from your house downspouts. This barrel allows you to use the collected water for watering your lawn or garden. The more important thing it does is to allow the water to slowly go back into the soil which helps reduce erosion downstream. When we have rain, the water from all of the impervious areas (roads, houses, driveways, etc.) all get to drainage ditches and streams around the same time. This can cause the erosion of soil which leads to sediments getting carried out to our waterways. These sediments pollute the local streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.
Another way to slow the drainage of water after
rain is to create a Rain Garden.
Rain Gardens simply help
filter the rain water and slow the water down so it can seep into
the ground instead of flowing over the ground causing erosion.
When the rain seeps into the ground, the soil helps filter contam
inants
out of the rain water but when the rain water flows across the
ground, it keeps a high percentage of the contaminants with it until
it reaches a drainage ditch or stream where it deposits all of the
contaminants into other drainage water which flows into the
waterways and Chesapeake Bay.
When selecting plants for your rain garden, you may want to check with groups such as Maryland Native Plant Society or Virginia Native Plant Society to select plants that are native to your garden.
If you are on a septic system, check with your
local and state environmental and health departments about things
you can do to help reduce nitrogen from getting into the Chesapeake
Bay. Some areas offer special grants to upgrade your septic
system to a nitrogen removing system. Another simpler thing
you can do is
to
make sure your septic system is pumped out a minimum of once every
two years.
There are many simple ways that you can help protect the Chesapeake Bay and your local community from pollutants. If we all make some simple changes, the results can be huge. Please do your part.