Soon after water destroyed homes and killed two people in University City two years ago, residents began to search for ways to prevent a similar flood from hitting their community again.
After looking at solutions in other communities around the world, some think tiny forests could help absorb water and stave off damage from flooding that is expected to worsen because of climate change.
A tiny forest is only about the size of a basketball court, but it can have big benefits, said Connie Mueller, chair of the Green Practices Commission in University City.
“It’s something we can do to help with climate change and our immediate flood problems,” Mueller said.
The tiny forest trend started in Japan, pioneered by botanist Akira Miyawaki, who began restoring natural forests in the 1980s, in part to prevent disasters. Now, the micro-ecosystems can be found around the world, but so far, there aren’t many examples in the St. Louis region.
One potential location Mueller is considering is a triangle of land owned by the city off Groby Road near Olive. The lot borders the River Des Peres and is near Brittany Woods Middle School, which Mueller hopes could lead to student participation in the project.
Mueller envisions a densely planted parcel of land full of native trees, plants and shrubs, like oaks, river birch, spice bush and witch hazel. The long roots of these plants do a better job soaking up water than a lawn-like alternative.
In creating the tiny forest, Mueller said it’s also important to add things like mulch to the soil to make it less dense, improving water absorption and creating conditions for the plants to mature much quicker than they would in nature.
“It won’t totally solve the flooding problem in U City or anywhere, but it’s a step,” Mueller said. “It’s a small thing that we can do and part of the attraction for me is that it’s an achievable project.”
Don Fitz’s basement filled with 7½ feet of water during the 2022 flood, destroying books and papers collected over a decades-long career dedicated to the environment. After the flood, he helped form the University Heights neighborhood association’s flood task force, which he now chairs.
“I experienced and I watched the devastation of my neighbors, and so that’s really what got me into the issue,” Fitz said.
More frequent and intense heavy precipitation events are already happening in the Midwest because of climate change, according to the federal government’s National Climate Assessment. Almost 9 inches of rain fell at the St. Louis airport on July 26, 2022, breaking the previous all-time one-day record by 2 inches.
But through his flood task force work, Fitz has learned climate change is just one factor creating more dangerous floods in St. Louis. Fitz said building homes right next to rivers, overuse of pavement and efforts to channelize rivers have made the situation even more dangerous.
“It’s not a natural disaster if you know that floods are going to happen and you just don’t build right up next to them,” Fitz said. “As soon as you build next to them and build roads next to them it becomes a human-made disaster.”
Fitz believes the solution will be returning the River Des Peres to its natural state as much as possible, working with the land to find natural ways to soak up water. He especially hopes the city will begin to take out unused parking lots, which don’t easily absorb heavy rains.
“There’s many areas in University City that are covered by large expanses of concrete where there’s not an ability of the land to soak up water,” Fitz said.
Mueller will give a presentation on how tiny forests could lessen flood damage at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the University City Library Auditorium. She aims to inform the community and find people who might be interested in volunteering to create the pilot plot.
