New wetlands to be added to Basil Griffin Park

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Basil Griffin Park is the beneficiary of a new federal grant awarded to Warren County Stormwater.

With this new money, they will be installing new wetlands near the football field at the park, providing not just beautiful new landscape at the park but an important new way to help maintain the cleanliness of the local area and the Lost River Cave system.

Wetland plants will be installed, which are better equipped to live in water than the Bermuda grass that is there right now. These new plants will serve a very important job to the local ecosystem.

“It will help with sedimentation, which is the largest pollutant in the state of Kentucky. So any kind of sediment that might run off from the lake or pick up on its way, it will trap and we’ll get to it before it gets into our tiny little cave system. It’ll also, the plants will help take any kind of nutrients that are overloaded that, you know, whether it’s from all the birds or all the people or anything like that, it will help treat those nutrients,” said Warren County Stormwater management director Nikki Koller.

Koller also says that it can be very difficult to clean once pollution does enter the cave system so these new plants are incredibly important.

Koller says the project will take time though as paperwork still needs to be filled out before the installation of new plants can begin. A new metal bridge will also be installed, replacing the wood one that currently exists there.

They plan on starting the project in later 2025, with the project expected to be completed sometime in 2026.