Two community leaders have won a grant for a storm water management project on Emerson Drive in Ames.

Jason Grimm, senior in landscape architecture, and Angie Young, ISU alumna, received a $5,465 grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday.

The two work for Mimi Wagner, associate professor in landscape architecture, planning, building and monitoring gardens in most of the residents’ yards who live on Emerson Drive.

The garden project works to minimize the overflow drainage of polluted water into College Creek and help the residents of Emerson Drive manage the water drainage when it rains.

The location of this project site is important because it is located near the headwaters of the stream, where sediment and other pollutants are likely to be highly concentrated.

“This particular neighborhood was determined by how the money could be best spent,” said Dave Perry, environmental specialist for the Iowa DNR.

Young and Grimm both said the experience has been an educational one.

“I see it more for the education,” Grimm said. “Education for students as well as the community. They can do it on their own.”

Young and Grimm have handed out informational brochures and maps, teaching the residents about the project and how to maintain it.

They explained how what they have been doing is a new, innovative idea to improve water quality, and they feel it is important to the Emerson Drive community and others as well.

“It can be implemented in other places,” Young said. “Hopefully it will springboard into other communities”

Members of the Emerson Drive community said the project has brought them together and given them something to talk about.

The DNR is not the only one helping to make the garden project possible.

Young and Grimm said Ames, Iowa State, and Wagner’s research fund all provided needed materials. Student volunteers put in more than 100 hours in volunteer work.

The residents of Emerson Drive have helped with the labor and even provided some of the plants.

Perry said the project is proving to be beneficial to the community and College Creek.

“It will be fun to come back and see the plants in two years,” Perry said. “I think what they are doing is great.”