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A storm drain painting project combats pollution in local rivers


A storm drain painting project combats pollution in local rivers

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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — A local project is drawing awareness to water pollution by painting over local storm drains that feed into the Hocking River.

Morgan Riddiford, an Ohio University grad student, came up with the idea last year. She held a competition for student artists to submit proposals.

Painting of boots in water and a fish with "The Hocking river starts here" written
The finished mural painted on the storm drain. [Sophia Hoersten]

The selected artist, Sophia Hoersten, is a spring 2025 graduate with a masters in art education. She has been painting since childhood, and as a fine arts major she took her love of art to a new level. 

“There it was, just sort of this perfect opportunity to see this fusion of environmentalism and art come together within this project,” Hoersten said.

She said it was important for her to combine her love of art with her appreciation for the city and the environment. “I was interested in exploring different topics like ecofeminism and things like that within my artwork,” she said.

The painting was completed in the spring and Hoersten said it caught people’s eye before she even finished. “As I was working on my artwork, there would be people walking by and they would offer their encouragement or just express appreciation for the work I was doing,” she said.

Though the painting has only been up for a few months, Hoersten hopes it will have a lasting impact. “It was really special seeing the community support the initiative,” she said. “It gets me seeing the actual impact that it had so far.”

Mural painting sketched out with chalk.
The painting project outlined and in progress. [Sophia Hoersten]

Sam Crowl, director of sustainability at Ohio University, hopes this becomes an annual project with at least one painting every year. They have yet to set a plan for the next steps. The process to get a painting done isn’t a simple one.

“There’s a bit of a timeline in order to pitch the project, get students to submit proposals and then select the location and get permissions, and then actually find the right weather to do the painting,” Crowl said.

The city of Athens partnered with the Office of Sustainability and Athens Soil and Water Conservation District to work on reducing stormwater pollution and bringing more awareness to the issue. 

“The way the Office of Sustainability is involved is reaching out to the community to educate them on the dangers of putting pollutants down our storm drains,” Crowl said.

The project has been a long time coming as the Environmental Protection Agency first started a stormwater management program about 25 years ago. This began with implementing policies in larger cities as most stormwater runs directly into a larger body of water.

“Every time you see a street drain and the water is rushing down there, that doesn’t go to the wastewater treatment plant, that goes directly into the Hocking River,” Crowl said. The water is not cleaned or filtered so any trash or grease ending up in a storm drain will later end up polluting local rivers.

“Back in 2011 the city of Athens started to create laws about what we can do with our stormwater and what kind of pollutants can go into our storm drains,” Crowl said. About five or six years later the EPA officially contacted the city with a deadline of 120 days to formulate a plan to get a permit to address pollution in stormwater drains.

Part of this plan included outreach to the local community to reduce pollution. Riddiford was inspired by Columbus’ FLOW project and decided to implement a similar idea in Athens.

The FLOW (Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed) storm drain art project was executed across downtown Columbus in 2023 with 20 artists each painting storm drains throughout the length of an almost 2½-mile street. 



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