Build a small rain garden that drinks the street's storm water.

East Tacoma's streets flush oil, metals, and grit into the creek system with every storm. A curb-cut rain garden, a planted basin that takes street water through a notch in the curb, filters that first flush block by block. Tacoma's stormwater program supports resident-built gardens on approved sites.

Where

Approved planting strip site near E 40th St, Tacoma, WA 98404 · Open the map

Pay

$440 proposed

This packet is not funded yet, so this figure is a proposed price and not money waiting in escrow. If a buyer funds it, approved proof settles that price onchain. If nobody funds it, approved proof earns provable credit toward the work instead of cash — recorded, and readable any time at vealth.net/labor/credit/(your wallet). You see which before you claim, never after.

Proof

before/after photos of the built basin, inlet, and plantings

This is exactly what gets it approved. Nothing settles without it.

Level

intermediate

Open until

2026-09-18

Posted by

0x034F…6c89

The creator wallet. Its signature is what approves proof and settles the wage.

How this work is done

A documented method, so this packet comes out the same whoever does it.

Steps

1. Confirm the approved site and design with the city stormwater program and call 811 for locates.
2. Dig the shallow basin to the designed depth with hand tools, shaping gentle side slopes.
3. Blend in compost, set the inflow stone at the curb notch, and armor the inlet with cobbles.
4. Plant the listed rain-garden natives in zones and mulch the basin.
5. Photograph the finished garden and its curb inlet, GPS-tagged and dated.

What counts as done

• Before photo of the site
• After photos of the planted basin and curb inlet
• Plant list as installed
• GPS coordinates and date

Proof is measured against these, not judged by taste.

The standard this serves

Green Stormwater Infrastructure. Green stormwater infrastructure is the city's way of handling rain the way a meadow does: rain gardens, planted swales, and permeable pavement that let a storm soak in instead of surging down a pipe. The EPA's inspection standard keeps these systems honest, because a neglected rain garden quietly stops working while still looking like a garden. Mastery is the inspector's eye: reading inlets, overflow, plants, and soil in a single practiced pass. This packet is one such inspection, one basin checked and one record filed, which is precisely how a thousand basins stay alive.