Day Six (May 27, 2012)
With the excessive amounts of rain that Mother Nature has bestowed upon the Mendham area, we went to go check the OWLZ and make sure it was still intact. After seeing the damage done to the playground, hopes were not high.
The Mendham Borough Department of Public Works had chipped the pile of branches and other sticks, but they had taken them away!
Therefore, here is what we started with on the last day:
- Almost no mulch on the main pathway
- Moved lining logs
- A large pile of silt and mulch (from the playground and the upper regions of the project) at the bottom of the hill
- Large tire tracks from the DPW vehicles
- Enough left-over mulch (hopefully) to help restore some of the damage and create another area.
After raking some of the mulch from the sides of the main path in towards the middle, we focused on identifying the main source of the water. What we determined was that most of the water from the playground would have followed it's normal route to the stream between Hilltop School and Hilltop Church, however one of the lining logs had caught a lot of mulch and clogged the pathway to the stream. This funneled much of the water down the path of least resistance: the OWLZ main trail. Thankfully this could be fixed easily, by removing the lining log in the way of the water and digging two drainage ditches, the water problem was fixed.
We also mulched a new classroom area (to replace the classroom destroyed by the water and silt) and changed the shape of the path using the left-over mulch from the other piles.
The Mendham Borough Department of Public Works had chipped the pile of branches and other sticks, but they had taken them away!
Therefore, here is what we started with on the last day:
- Almost no mulch on the main pathway
- Moved lining logs
- A large pile of silt and mulch (from the playground and the upper regions of the project) at the bottom of the hill
- Large tire tracks from the DPW vehicles
- Enough left-over mulch (hopefully) to help restore some of the damage and create another area.
After raking some of the mulch from the sides of the main path in towards the middle, we focused on identifying the main source of the water. What we determined was that most of the water from the playground would have followed it's normal route to the stream between Hilltop School and Hilltop Church, however one of the lining logs had caught a lot of mulch and clogged the pathway to the stream. This funneled much of the water down the path of least resistance: the OWLZ main trail. Thankfully this could be fixed easily, by removing the lining log in the way of the water and digging two drainage ditches, the water problem was fixed.
We also mulched a new classroom area (to replace the classroom destroyed by the water and silt) and changed the shape of the path using the left-over mulch from the other piles.
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