RING's Solar Waterfalls Project 2000

In the early 1990s, Manhattan Borough President, Ruth Messinger provided some funding for our first pond, a 135-gallon kidney-shaped, molded plastic one, which held a couple of water lillies, a few goldfish and snails.  Over the next few years, we built a hill nearby, installed an upper "pond" (a kitchen sink!) with a liner, and a lined stream to connect them.  Purchase of a 50-watt Solarex panel, a small pump to get water to the upper pond, and a rock spillway completed RING's first waterfalls.

As part of Borough President Messinger's 1996-1997 capital outlay to reconstruct RING, a larger solar waterfalls complex was possible, and thanks to Arthur Sherry, and many volunteers, a group of five cascading ponds, including the original one, as well as a 800-900 gallon, 4 foot deep pond, a natural biofilter (bog), and mechanical vortex and biofilter, were designed and landscaped in the Fall of 1999 and Spring/Summer 2000.  These photos show the construction and finished product including a bog.