Sunnyside Elementary School is located in the North Clackamas School District in a highly suburban neighborhood, just off of busy SE Sunnyside Road. At this school, 95% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch and nearly 50% of its student body are kids of color. Only 25% of students met grade level benchmarks in science.
The school also sits in the Rock Creek watershed, a tributary of the Clackamas River. A large part of the school’s parking lot was recently upgraded with new stormwater management facilities (pictured below), but the school’s back parking still flows off site untreated. The Sunnyside Stormwater Retrofit Project will change that.
In partnership with the North Clackamas School District, Sunnyside School community, and contractors Parametrix and Verde Builds, this project will build a stormwater planter that will treat polluted runoff from almost 10,000 square feet of parking lot. Plants will uptake pollutants and also help slow stormwater during rain events, allowing rainwater to slowly infiltrate into the soil. With the completion of this project, the entire Sunnyside parking area will drain to stormwater facilities that capture and treat pollutants.
Additionally, Sunnyside students will be involved in the project. Students will learn about the impacts of stormwater pollution during a class lesson with the Estuary Partnership’s Environmental Educators, and will have the opportunity to plant native trees, shrubs, and grasses as part of the project to support the health of their watershed.
The project is expected to be constructed in March 2025. The project is funded by the Clackamas Water Environment Services RiverHealth Stewardship Program and EPA’s Columbia River Basin Restoration Program.