Rain barrels

Using rain gardens and rain barrels helps the river: during heavy rain events rain pours off of impervious surfaces such as home and garage roofs, running almost directly into storm sewers that feed into the river. The rain never has a chance to soak into the earth and filter into the groundwater, and then we have flooding with no replenishment of waterways during the hot dry season.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentenel had an article yesterday on the benefits of rain barrels and rain gardens.

Contact the MMSD to get your own rain barrel;for further benefit, you can hook it up to a rain garden.