Rain gardening 101: Brighten your yard & keep waterways clean
The 80,000 acres of prairie that once flourished across St. Louis, Missouri are all but gone today — replaced by roads, buildings and lawns. And when nature disappears, rain has few places to go.
That’s a growing problem. As the atmosphere warms, it holds more moisture — which means more rain. Climate change is making storms more intense and flooding more frequent in many parts of the U.S.
The cost is rising. Nationwide, the number of billion-dollar flood disasters has more than doubled in the past five years. The loss of U.S. wetlands alone is estimated to have cost us more than $33 billion in flood damages, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Environmental Defense Fund…