Food, Water, and Land Use

The Bard Campus: nearly 1,000 acres in the Hudson River Valley

The developed portion of campus occupies about 100 acres; the remainder comprises meadows, forests, wetlands, a tidal estuary, and the Saw Kill, a Hudson River tributary. The campus is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and is part of the Hudson River Direct Drainage area, Saw Kill Subwatershed. The Saw Kill provides the College with its drinking water. Wastewater is returned to the Saw Kill after it is treated at our sewer treatment plant. Bard seeks to continuously improve its practices related to water conservation, wastewater, and stormwater. The Bard Farm at the north end of campus has views of the Catskills.

Land Acknowledgment for Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson

Developed in Cooperation with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community

In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who are the original stewards of the land. Today, due to forced removal, the community resides in Northeast Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We honor and pay respect to their ancestors past and present, as well as to future generations, and we recognize their continuing presence in their homelands. We understand that our acknowledgment requires those of us who are settlers to recognize our own place in and responsibilities toward addressing inequity, and that this ongoing and challenging work requires that we commit to real engagement with the Munsee and Mohican communities to build an inclusive and equitable space for all.

This land acknowledgment, adopted in 2020, required establishing and maintaining long-term, and evolving, relationships with the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. The Mellon Foundation's 2022 Humanities for All Times grant for “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” offers three years of support for developing a land acknowledgment–based curriculum, public-facing Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) programming, and efforts to support the work of emerging NAIS scholars and tribally enrolled artists at Bard.

Food, Water, and Land Use Initiatives

Food and Farming on Campus

The Bard Farm produces vegetables for Bard Dining and has a seasonal weekly farm stand. The Bard Farm Educator, Rebecca Yoshino, works to restore the carbon content of farm soil. Bard Dining is committed to improving the food system. By 2019, more than 20% of food met the definition of real food according to the student-driven Real Food Challenge. Staff, students, and faculty collaborate through BardEATS. Bard Farm BardEATS
Stormwater and Wastewater

Stormwater comes from rain or melting snow that doesn’t soak into the ground but runs off into waterways. Non–point source pollution from stormwater runoff is a leading cause of stream health degradation in New York State. Bard was awarded funding from New York State to implement a Regional Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project at the Olin parking lot that addressed stormwater runoff from a 9-acre drainage area on the Bard campus.
Stormwater and Wastewater

Stormwater comes from rain or melting snow that doesn’t soak into the ground but runs off into waterways. Non–point source pollution from stormwater runoff is a leading cause of stream health degradation in New York State. Bard was awarded funding from New York State to implement a Regional Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project at the Olin parking lot that addressed stormwater runoff from a 9-acre drainage area on the Bard campus.

Olin Parking Lot
The Bard Regional Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project at Olin addresses storm-water runoff from a 9-acre drainage area on the Bard campus. The project used permeable asphalt, porous paver walkways, a constructed wetland, bioretention and bioswales. The project ultimately cleans water before entering the Saw Kill, which is Bard’s drinking water source. Does it work? Professor Robyn Smyth's Environmental & Urban Studies students use the site as a living laboratory for their classwork.

Low Impact Development / Green Infrastructure Features – how we slow down water and help clean it up:
- 81-space permeable parking lot (asphalt); 25,500 square feet
- Constructed wetland – walk around the path and find a frog
- Permeable paver walkway
- (2) small bioswales in the lawn south of Henderson computer lab
- Native planting along east side of parking lot
- Vegetated bioretention swale on the west side
Video Timeline:
- Does it work? the Hose Test
- Installing at the north end
- Rainy day drive into south end,
- Bucket Demo
- North end under construction (includes ponding on walkway, porous parking working at entrance)
Micro Hydropower Project

In 2016, Bard received $1 million from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority's Energy to Lead Competition to evaluate and implement micro hydropower on existing small dams on the College's 1,000-acre campus. A dedicated website helps explain how this complicated, multidimensional, mutistakeholder project continues to take shape.
microhydrony.org
Drinking Water and Water Conservation

Water makes up more than 75 percent of the Earth's surface, yet only 2.8 percent of it is available for human consumption. The Bard Water Lab is a student-run community lab devoted to bringing water science to water communities. The lab is an initiative of the Bard Center for the Study of Land, Air, and Water in collaboration with the Saw Kill Watershed Community.
Bard Water Lab