Ecological Planting of Ponds Part of Cougar Pride Days 2005

“This project has wonderful potential for involvement of many WSU students, faculty, staff and community members,” said Cougar Pride Days committee member Bobbie Ryder, senior campus planner with WSU Capital Planning and Development.

The workers will plant trees, shrubs and sedges, perennial herbs common to most fresh water wetlands, in two storm water settling ponds in the old county gravel quarry on the Pullman-Moscow Highway, state Route 270, below WSU’s Yakama Village graduate student housing.

Capital Planning and Development built the ponds, on property it bought from Whitman County, using clay soil excavated from other major capital projects on the WSU campus, Ryder said. As part of the purchase, the county paid the university to build the ponds and to assume the Washington State Department of Transportation wetland obligation of the nearby Bill Chipman Trail construction.  It also paid for seeding the area in native grasses.

Currently, Ryder is raising about $8,000 from several university offices and departments to pay for the new plantings.

“We’ve had enthusiastic response from faculty and staff members in using the ponds as an outdoor laboratory for environmental projects and there has already been some activity,” Ryder said.  

Students from the WSU Community Service Learning Center will work on the project. A student of Rod Sayler, university Department of Natural Resource Sciences faculty member, used the ponds as a study site for a water quality report.  Sayler has incorporated the ponds planting in his ecological restoration class curriculum this semester. Also, Ryder said, landscape architecture students at the university have used it for various class projects.