As the government adopts new LID practices, one branch of the service charges ahead.
The US Navy has taken a service-wide approach in adopting a new low-impact development (LID) policy for stormwater management at its facilities. In December 2007, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for environment, Donald Schregardus, announced the change at the Chesapeake Bay Observation System (CBOS) User Forum in Norfolk, VA.
The location was appropriate, for CBOS is a network of observing stations that collects data on the quality of the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding waterways. A number of facilities owned by the Navy and other military services adjoin the Chesapeake Bay or have runoff that drains into it, directly or eventually.
The LID policy will affect both new construction (projects exceeding $750,000) and renovation (projects costing more than $5 million) at Navy and Marine bases across the country. The policy requires incorporating LID strategies where possible in fiscal years 2008 through 2010. Full implementation is required in fiscal year 2011.
Growing environmental awareness and the need to be cost-effective—reasons the Navy shares with municipalities and private businesses—prompted the adaption of LID as an overall strategy to dealing with stormwater runoff. A third impetus for the policy was unique to the military: Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).
The federal BRAC effort began several years ago to distribute military bases more efficiently across the country. One effect of this military policy is a spike in jobs in certain areas of the country as bases are closed or consolidated elsewhere. Along with more jobs comes more demand for housing, schools, and roads—and therefore more impervious surface.
BRAC’s strongest impact will be in the Chesapeake Bay region. The Department of Defense owns more than 400,000 acres of land in the area, including shoreland. BRAC will create thousands of jobs there by 2011. For example, at least 40,000 and possibly as many as 60,000 new military and contractor jobs will open in only eight counties in Maryland. Realizing the far-reaching effects of BRAC on the bay and its tributaries hastened the Navy’s switch to LID strategies.
Schregardus told the Norfolk audience, “The Department of the Navy’s LID policy is an important step forward in the ongoing efforts by federal, state, private, and non-governmental organizations to preserve and protect the health of the Chesapeake Bay, one of our nation’s most valuable natural resources.”
The goal of the Navy’s new policy is “no net increase” in the amount of stormwater volume, sediment, and nutrient loading that escapes into the ecosystems surrounding Navy and Marine Corps facilities and installations nationwide. The policy also mandates that the most cost-effective stormwater treatment techniques be applied.
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Photo: Naval Base Kitsap
A biofiltration swale was included in a parking lot completed in July 2008 at Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor, WA. |
Construction projects must imitate a site’s predevelopment hydrology with design techniques that infiltrate, filter, store, evaporate, or retain runoff close to its source. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) at Port Hueneme, CA, is in charge of seeing that Navy and Marine installations meet the policy’s requirements.
Alex Beehler, Assistant deputy under secretary of defense for environment, safety and occupational health, also spoke at the ceremony to announce the Navy’s new policy. Beehler said, “I commend the Navy for leaning forward and adopting LID as an integral part of its future construction and renovation projects, not only in the Chesapeake Bay, but nationwide.” He added, “I will be working with the other DOD [Department of Defense] components to promote a similar approach.”
Of course, the Navy has already been working for some time to improve the way stormwater is handled at its installations. The service spent more than $18 million on stormwater management from 2000 to 2004. The new regulations will increase that amount significantly.
The Navy, with its shipyards, industrial storage buildings, and airfields, has some difficult problems in dealing with stormwater, including limited space availability, low hydraulic head, and unusual contaminants. Sometimes weather conditions, security, or maintenance limitations make it difficult, impractical, or even impossible to employ standard best management practices (BMPs).
NAVFAC, which is similar to an in-company laboratory and engineering testing facility, is the Navy installation that develops technology and resources to meet scientific and environmental problems that occur at other Navy facilities. Along with a Deep Ocean Laboratory, a Chemical Analysis and Materials Testing Laboratory, and an Advanced Waterfront Technology Test Site, NAVFAC has its National Environmental Technology Test Site. NAVFAC’s Environmental Engineering division draws on these facilities to help the Navy comply with environmental requirements and perform environmental restoration at more than 185,500 fixed facilities, which impact more than 100,000 natural ecosystems.
NAVFAC’s Engineering Service Center (ESC) developed a Web-based expert system called the Storm Water BMP Decision Support Tool. This program is designed to help users identify the most cost-effective stormwater BMPs to address runoff problems at various DOD installations. The Web site is based on a review of proven BMPs and lessons learned from past and ongoing BMP projects performed by the DOD, government, and private business.
Another example of work done by the engineers at NAVFAC’s ESC is an innovative stormwater treatment system to remove heavy-metal pollutants released from the roofs of industrial buildings at Navy installations. The filter-adsorption media bed system designed, built, and tested there consists of treatment tanks packed with bone char and ferrous-coated activated alumina.
Tested first at Norfolk Naval Base building V88 (which was proven to discharge heavy-metal pollutants into a nearby stormwater outfall), the system worked well. It removed copper and zinc so effectively that copper, which entered at the rate of 156 parts per billion (ppb), exited at less than 5 ppb. Entering zinc measured over 1,000 ppb and exited at less than 5 ppb.
The treatment system is a spinoff of technology first used at the Navy Recycling Center in San Diego, CA. It should continue to capture heavy-metal pollutants for more than 10 years before needing to be replaced. “The Navy is committed to protecting the environment and our natural resources. We have recognized the fact that introducing heavy metals into stormwater runoff is a huge problem and have taken steps to prevent this from occurring,” says Captain Gregory J. Zielinski, Commanding Officer of NAVFAC’s ESC.
He adds, “This new water treatment system will eliminate the possibility of tainted stormwater runoff entering our nation’s ecosystems, and we believe it is a long-term solution to remedy these issues.”
As this system is tested further, performance data will be included in the Web-based BMP expert system. The Web site is part of the Navy’s Environmental Sustainability Development to Integration Program.
Many of the Navy’s stormwater LID projects are in the mid-Atlantic region, in the Chesapeake Bay area, for two reasons. Even before BRAC began, there were many Navy sites in the area. It is also home to some large bodies of water, including the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Chesapeake Bay, which have suffered pollution and neglect.
David Cotnoir, P.E., senior water program manager for NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic, notes, “Several LID retrofit projects were constructed between 2006 and 2008. All have interpretive signs to educate base personnel about the benefits of LID and protecting the Chesapeake Bay.”
While several projects are being monitored to determine performance, “limited data has been gathered due to drought and technical issues with sampling,” Cotnoir says, adding that the focus “has been on removing copper and zinc as stormwater permits have screening values for these parameters.”
Naval Station Norfolk (NSN), VA, has a bioretention area that treats drainage from an 8,100-square-foot area behind the steam plant where empty dumpsters and pipe are stored. Another bioretention area at NSN treats drainage from a 72,665-square-foot parking lot in front of an aircraft maintenance hangar. Both projects alleviated some flooding.
Other retrofit LID projects at NSN include a bioretention area at the shipyard, which treats runoff from 9,000 square feet of parking area and road near the chapel; nine biofiltration planters, which treat rooftop runoff from buildings with architectural metals of concern; a bioretention area treating runoff from the 11,500-square-foot roof of the steam plant; and a bioretention area that treats runoff from the 22,468-square-foot parking area of a fast-food facility.
Other retrofit LID projects in the mid-Atlantic region include two bioretention areas at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, VA, which treat drainage from 5,000 square feet of concrete pad that is used to repair elevated causeways. Marine Corps Air Station New River, NC, added four bioretention areas, totaling approximately 1.5 acres, for the parking lot at the Environmental Management Building, plus two biofiltration planters for rooftop runoff from its Officers’ Club.
New LID projects include two bioretention areas for parking lots at the Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune, NC. One serves a fire station and another is by the bachelor quarters for enlisted personnel.
The Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, VA, has bioretention areas surrounding a new parking lot that measures about 1 acre. NSN in Virginia also has an impressive 13 bioretention areas that treat the drainage from a 13-acre asphalt cover. This cover serves as the Superfund remedy for a former construction debris landfill. It now functions as a parking lot.
Over the last few years, the Naval Aviation Engineering Station in Lakehurst, NJ, has installed a vegetated filter strip for stormwater runoff from its 5,000-square-foot Naval Air Systems Command warehouse and has installed several infiltration basins on a number of projects. Cotnoir says that the two most recent are “the C-17 assault landing zone (a 75-acre project) and the Army National Guard Combined Logistics and Training Facility (a 60-acre project).”
The Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, VA, installed 43,200 square feet of permeable pavers for two roads plus 7,600 square feet of these pavers on walkways. The project reduced traditional paved surfaces on the hospital grounds by 10%.
In January 2008, the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) named the Naval Medical Center as a Model Level River Star facility for its shoreline control plantings along Scotts Creek. The hospital environmental staff partnered with volunteers from the ERP and the regional environmental coordinator of the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) to do two plantings in the shallow water along 250 feet of shoreline. The aquatic plants will slow and filter stormwater runoff, preventing it from entering the creek, the Elizabeth River, and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay.
Charles (Charlie) Wilson has been the Navy CBP coordinator since June 2006. He works with the DOD’s CBP coordinator, Carolyn Neill, on various programs. Wilson is “optimistic about the future of the DOD and Navy Chesapeake Bay Program and about the bay’s prospects overall,” he says.
Citing more interest from states, other federal agencies, and private organizations, Wilson predicts “more opportunities to partner [with these groups].”
Wilson, Neill, and other people produce the Joint Military Services’ “Chesapeake Review,” a bimonthly newsletter available to anyone. The publication highlights efforts by the Navy and other services working with civilian groups to improve the Chesapeake Bay. One 2008 issue highlights the Merrimac Farm, which adjoins the US Marine Corps Base Quantico in VA.
Maintained by a retired Marine as a wildlife and hunting preserve for 50 years, the farm will be preserved that way permanently after its purchase by the Marine Corps. Its 312 acres include wetlands, which will continue to help mitigate pollution in the watershed.
While much of the Navy’s attention to stormwater has been on the East Coast, LID projects have also been added to West Coast installations, with more on the drawing boards. A biofiltration swale was included in a parking lot completed in July 2008 at Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor, WA. Runoff from the site drains directly into Hood Canal, a 600-foot-deep glacially carved fjord, which was designated by the state of Washington as an aquatic habitat of “extraordinary quality.”
The swale was designed to infiltrate runoff from the 6-month, 24-hour storm. Runoff from higher-volume storms will flow through the vegetated swale as surface flow before entering an overflow catch basin.
Vegetation includes native plants such as salal, sand strawberry, sword fern, purple willow, rushes, and red dogwood. The soil profile consists of 4 inches of topsoil covering 18 inches of permeable soil mix underlain by 12 inches of drain rock.
According to Bryan Haelsig, P.E., an environmental engineer with Naval Facilities Engineering Command Northwest, “The majority of site runoff is expected to infiltrate or be retained within the swale.”
But, he says, given the relatively wet winters of the Pacific Northwest and the low permeability of the underlying glacial till, “Underdrains were installed to prevent long term saturated soil conditions.”
This project was designed prior to implementation of the Navy’s new policy requiring consideration of LID techniques. However, it had to meet existing Washington state stormwater treatment requirements. A design-build project under the authority of NAVFAC, the project was designed by Winzler and Kelly Consulting Engineers. The prime contractor was Watts/Korsmo Construction.
Naval District Washington (NDW) encompasses more than 4,000 square miles, covering Washington DC, five counties in Maryland, and eight counties in northern Virginia. NDW includes 400 commands and activities and more than 67,000 military and civilian employees. It manages all of the Navy installations within this region, including environmental compliance and stewardship.
Krista Grigg is stormwater program manager for seven of these installations. They include the Washington Navy Yard, Naval Support Facility (NSF) Anacostia, NSF Observatory, NSF Carderock, NSF Potomac, NSF Suitland, and NSF Arlington.
The Washington Navy Yard occupies 63.3 acres of the NDW, in an urban setting. In 1998 the Navy Yard, the District of
Columbia, and the EPA signed an agreement for cleaning up the hazardous materials that had accumulated for years in the Navy Yard. EPA named the Washington Navy Yard to its National Priorities List. The Navy has been working ever since to improve its immediate and surrounding environment.
Starting in 2001, the Navy installed a number of LID retrofits to deal with the problem of stormwater at various sites in the Washington Navy Yard. The cost of the 10 projects
was $500,000.
In the parking area at the Washington Navy Yard’s Willard Park are several bioretention and detention cells, added when parking structures were replaced or repaired. One long strip bioretention cell and a smaller cell, approximately 10 feet by 20 feet, collect sheet flow from surrounding parking lots. The smaller cell also serves the bus parking area, the site of many oil leaks. A rain barrel collects and stores runoff from the roof of Building 292.
One very large UNI-stone permeable paver cell is in the center of the parking lot. A smaller permeable paver cell, adjacent to historical Building 70, collects runoff that flows through old copper downspouts, which are found on many of the oldest buildings within the Washington Navy Yard.
The historic Navy Museum (Building 76) has a rain garden that captures runoff from the roof’s copper downspout. The planting was completed through a partnership with DC Greenworks, a nonprofit organization. The project was part of the organization’s “Bridges to Friendship” program, which trains disadvantaged local youths in a trade.
The parking lot of Building 166, the Washington Navy Yard’s Dental Clinic, was regraded and repaved to ensure runoff flow to the LID features. It now has two large UNI-Stone permeable paver strips, each underlain with gravel chips and then several feet of gravel. The parking lot has curbs and curb cuts to allow runoff to flow into two bioretention cells.
Howard University students sampled runoff flowing into the western bioretention cell and also flow that was being discharged from the perforated pipes. Their study showed a 98 to 99% removal of sediments, metals, and other contaminants.
As for which of the LID projects at the Washington Navy Yard has proven to be the most impressive, Grigg says, “I have given many tours of the LIDs at the Yard, and I think maybe it’s the Building 166 parking lot. It shows that it can be done successfully, and that these LIDs still are very effective despite not having much maintenance.”
Storm drain inlets now keep trash and debris from entering the nearby Anacostia River. Careful planning means that installation of these LID features has caused minimal interference to visitors and employees. Best of all, no parking spaces had to be forfeited.
Additional stormwater and LID features have been added at various sites. These additions include a permeable paver patio to replace an impermeable one, disconnected downspouts to allow roof runoff to infiltrate, and storm drain inlet structures to trap sediment and debris. A tree box filter at the 9th Street gate lessens runoff around the site and cleans the water before it enters a catch basin. Aggregate gravel now allows infiltration in some open space areas.
Beyond the Washington Navy Yard, but still within the NDW, stands the US Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, MD. The service academy has two bioretention cells and a permeable paver strip, visible to both midshipmen and visitors in the front of Alumni Hall and across the street in its parking lot. The cells replaced an existing under-designed and damaged trench drain and capture runoff from an area of approximately 1 acre.
In June 2007, six LID BMPs were completed at a naval facility in Solomons Island, MD They include one bioretention cell and five infiltration trenches. Grigg says the bioretention cell has “an underdrain and intercepts 0.52 acre of stormwater runoff from a parking area. The five infiltration trenches were installed to function as water-quality filtration and to alleviate flooding in three acres of campgrounds.”
Of these last two LID projects, Grigg says, “Both the Solomons and the US Naval Academy bioretention cells have been very successful in sparking the interest of Navy employees and the public. Our construction contractors were contacted frequently by passers-by and employees interested in the purpose of the LIDs and excited that the Navy was acting as an environmental steward.”
NSF Carderock has two planned LID projects that will be constructed in 2009. An existing parking lot of 1 acre will receive a bioretention cell with underdrain system. A new parking lot will be built according to the Navy’s LID policy, with a large bioretention cell to capture a portion of the new impervious area’s runoff.
The Navy’s new LID policy on stormwater will have influence beyond the confines of its property. Most of the LID features described above are part of installations that have National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits. Training for all Navy employees on LID techniques for managing stormwater begins in 2009.
B.J. Penn, assistant secretary of the navy for installations and environment, says that the Navy’s new LID policy “represents a commitment to preserving and protecting the environment where we work and live. The policy advocates a cost-effective solution that will help minimize the environmental footprint of our installations and facilities.”