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Trexler Meadow

Funded by a Lehigh Valley Greenways mini-grant, Master Watershed Stewards in 2018 piloted a meadow conversion at Trexler Park. The Trexler Meadow project addresses the overuse and misuse of home herbicides and pesticides, as this can be a major source of water pollution. Vast expanses of lawn in suburban areas can be time-consuming and expensive to maintain. There has been a growing interest in using wildflower meadows as an alternative to turf grass. While large-scale, multi-acre meadow establishment projects have huge impact, the conversion process is daunting to homeowners. To address this challenge, we installed a quarter acre demonstration native plant meadow at the Trexler Environmental Center using a kill-and-seed + plug method to illustrate an attainable result for a homeowner.

Municipal Raingardens

Township and Borough government buildings have a good deal of local community traffic as people come to pay bills, attend meetings, and do local business. So these buildings are perfect sites to install demonstration examples of stormwater management practices that homeowners could install on their own properties. Over the past ten years, the WCLV has worked with Master Watershed Stewards and local municipal public works staff to design and install rain gardens all around the Lehigh Valley. Rain gardens are in place at the Upper Saucon Township building, the Upper Saucon Township Authority, and Bushkill, Plainfield, and Pen Argyl municipal buildings.

Rain garden at Pen Argyl Borough

Ross McLennan at the completed Borough rain garden

MWSs Jane Cook and Mike Nagle Planting Plugs

Bushkill Township Rain Garden

The Bushkill Township rain garden was built in 2013 with a Lehigh Valley Greenways grant. Master Watershed Stewards designed and built the garden with the help of the Bushkill Township roads crew.

Hokendauqua Park Pussy Willow Buffer

This project was supported by a Lehigh Valley Greenways mini-grant and done in collaboration with the Bertsch Hokendauqua Catasauqua Watershed Association. The project included treating the existing lawn area, planting 425 pussy willow live stakes – 17 varieties! – and creating a sign to explain the benefits of buffers to park visitors. The pussy willow varieties were chosen for their aesthetic value to florists, once the willows grow in a little, pussy willows can be harvested and sold to local florists. This project is located at Hokendauqua Park on Lehigh Street in Whitehall just off Rt. 145 and is accessible to the public.

March 30th, 2021, Noon – The Delaware River Basin – A Framework of Water Law and Regulation

Virtual Event: JThe Delaware River impacts the lives of 13 million people just they continue to impact the river. This program provides an overview of this interactive relationship, including the basin’s decline from pollution since European settlement, and its recent revival to become the 2020 river of the year.

The Delaware River Basin
Harry Boertzel – Bucks County Master Watershed Steward

Watch live on Facebook, or register to watch through Zoom, 12:00 pm, March 30th.

Tuesday, March 30th at noon – presented through webinar and live-streamed on Facebook.

The Delaware River impacts the lives of 13 million people just they continue to impact the river. This program provides an overview of this interactive relationship, including the basin’s decline from pollution since European settlement, and its recent revival to become the 2020 river of the year.

Join us to learn the history of water quality in the Delaware River basin, and the legal and regulatory framework that provides basin management.

First Warm Rainy Night, 2021: Flash Mob Herpabout

Join us for an evening (after sunset) of frog and salamander stalking, led by Jim Wilson and Brad Kunsman around the Minsi Lake/Bear Swamp area. We will visit vernal pools, watch salamanders on the move, and learn about the lives and habitats of our local amphibian friends.

Leave us your contact information, and we’ll email out a registration link the day before – if you can make it, then register! Limited to 20 participants. Plan for a chilly, dark, and wet evening.

Want to see the spring’s first amphibians on the move? Well, join us on…..the first warm rainy night of spring. When is that? We just don’t know until right before it happens!!Join us for an evening of frog and salamander stalking, led by Jim Wilson and Brad Kunsman around the Minsi Lake/Bear Swamp area. We will visit vernal pools, watch salamanders on the move, and learn about the lives and habitats of our local amphibian friends. Here’s how this will work: we’ll collect the contact information of everyone who who would like to come. Jim and Brad will watch the weather and when they identify what they think is the right night, we’ll send out and email about the time and place to meet. The time will be after dark, which, of course, gets gradually later as the winter moves along. If you can make it, perfect!! If not, well then perhaps we’ll try again in 2022! Wear appropriate clothing – after all, it will still be winter, and likely it will be raining. It will definitely be dark.