Nashville fights floods, pollution with Green Alley project

After a history of water damage in the city, Nashville residents are fighting back.

Mayor Karl Dean presents the Green Alley project, an effort to restore and sustain waterways damaged during the 2010 flood and to reduce the amount of polluted stormwater.

“Volunteers will work to beautify a neighborhood while also helping make our city stronger by making it more resilient to weather-related events,” Dean said in a statement. “It is my hope that this project will become a successful model of stormwater mitigation that other neighborhoods can replicate.”

Working in the Nations neighborhood, volunteers will plant shallow rain gardens in residents’ yards to collect rainwater, keeping more rain in the ground and out of storm systems. Participants also will dig a green alley along the alleyways to capture stormwater traveling from the alley and yards to Richland Creek.

The service is free for residents, who also will receive free rain garden materials.

This effort is a collaboration between the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods, Impact Nashville, Hands On Nashville, the Cumberland River Compact and Metro Water Services. Funding comes from the Cities of Service Award, which the city received in December.

Volunteer opportunities are from March through May and September through November. For details, visit hon.org/greenalley.