The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, aka the Stimulus Act, has provided funds for infrastructure projects in major cities and small cities all across the country. Those infrastructure projects include stormwater projects, with money channeled through the states’ Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act State Revolving Funds. Some of the funding is in the form of 20-year, low-interest loans and some is loan forgiven—in effect, outright grants.
The Stimulus Act requires that 20% of the state revolving loan funding be used for “environmentally innovative” projects. Municipal water officials, landscape architects, and engineers have unprecedented opportunities to install low-impact development (LID) strategies to manage stormwater runoff.
New York
Projects to deal with flooding and pollution that have been waiting for funding for years will become reality. Two recipients of significant amounts of stimulus funding are New York City and New York State. Their funded stormwater management projects include a range of strategies.
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| City of Spokane |
New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has said that his city has “the nation’s most sweeping urban environmental agenda, so we leave our children a greener, healthier city.”
Stimulus Act funding for water infrastructure improvements to New York City reached $220 million in September 2009. Two of the funded projects that involve managing stormwater are long overdue. The city will receive $20 million to restore 38 acres of wetlands and natural grasslands to the Paerdegat Basin, a channel that connects to Jamaica Bay on the southern end of Brooklyn. The north end of Paerdegat Basin is near the combined sewer system plant on Knapp Street. During heavy storms, the plant cannot treat the full volume of stormwater, so untreated water is forced to flow into the basin.
Nearly half a million residents live in the drainage area of the basin. Stormwater runoff has increased fivefold since the 1930s. With stimulus funding, the city will plant local vegetation, restore the Jamaica Bay’s shoreline, and construct a large catch basin to keep runoff and street litter from reaching the bay.
Five acres of land will be made into an “ecology park,” giving visitors access to saltwater marshes and grassland areas. Permeable pavement will be used for walkways. Educational exhibits will teach school children and visitors about the habitat.
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Photo: Eileen Keenan, New York Sea Grant NEMO
A project in Long Island will keep runoff from the South Shore Estuary Reserve. |
The city will receive $2 million to reduce stormwater flooding in the boroughs of Staten Island, the Bronx (Pelham Parkway), and Queens (Cambria Heights and Far Rockaway). Existing roadway drainage will be converted into green infrastructure that will both beautify neighborhoods and keep untreated runoff out of local waterways. The funds are for planting trees, building street planters, and installing landscaped swales.
Mayor Bloomberg was especially pleased about the second project because it will “reduce flooding in areas that have long suffered from stormwater flooding—particularly Southeast Queens.”
Construction on both of these projects started in January 2010 and is scheduled to be finished in January 2012. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation will be responsible for maintaining the areas. The city will use another $45 million in funding to upgrade sewer and water main infrastructure in the Southeast Queens area.
Recovery funds received by New York State total $432 million. They will be used for a range of projects across the state in large cities and small villages. Because 20% of the federal funds must be used for green projects, they are among the most noticeable.
The Lindenhurst Memorial Library in Suffolk County on Long Island is adding a parking lot for patrons. Located in an MS4 (municipal separate storm sewer system) area, the lot will have permeable pavement and bioswales to reduce stormwater runoff. Runoff has been the source of most pollution in the South Shore Estuary Reserve. This project will infiltrate stormwater and keep it out of the estuary.
In Oneida County, the city of Utica received over $800,000 for projects to mitigate the impact of stormwater on the Mohawk River. Some of the money will be used to provide rain barrels so homeowners can disconnect downspouts from the sewer system and use the water for irrigating their lawns and gardens. The city will plant 275 trees in curb-modified tree pits and another 25 trees in engineered precast tree pits.
The city of Rome, also in Oneida County, will use $250,000 to restore its urban canopy of trees. Besides planting trees, the project involves replacing impervious surfaces around them with pervious rubber pavement.
In western New York, $9.8 million in stimulus funds will be spent on a variety of projects. The Monroe County Civic Center will receive $3.2 million for the green roof on its plaza level. Green roofs are also part of projects in the villages of Medina and Lyons and the town of Williamson. These three projects, which include rainwater harvesting systems, are to upgrade municipal wastewater treatment plants.
By constructing rain gardens with $151,200 of stimulus money, the town of Amherst will be able to reduce 20% of the impervious surface of some existing parking lots. During each storm event, this demonstration project will treat approximately 4,800 cubic feet of stormwater runoff from the 2.4-acre site. The parking lots are near an impaired part of Ellicott Creek, which is part of the Niagara River and Great Lakes watersheds.
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Photo: NYC Department of Parks and Recreation
Flood-prone areas in Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens will receive funding. |
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Photo: NYC Department of Environmental Protection
New York City is restoring wetlands in the Paerdegat Basin, which drains into Jamaica Bay. |
In North Tonawanda, the Manhattan Street Parking Lot Municipal Rain Garden will reduce the largest continuous areas of impervious surface in the city. The $263,295 project includes a rain garden and bioretention cells that will capture and infiltrate an estimated 1,000,000 gallons of stormwater annually. The Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper will use the project for educational purposes.
Onondaga County will spend $180,000 on rain barrels for home and business owners in the Harbor Brook sewershed. The county is under federal order to undertake improvements to reduce stormwater and the combined sewer overflows (CSOs) it sends into nearby Onondaga Lake.
A related project involves creekside revitalization to mitigate stormwater runoff into the lake. The county will receive $900,000 to convert 113,830 square feet of the impervious creekwalk into pervious pavement in walkways and parking areas. Rain gardens, tree pits and tree trenches, and bioretention swales will also be added.
Another Onandaga County stimulus stormwater project involves 47,500 square feet of permeable paving on roads and sidewalks in the Xavier Circle Green City Homes housing project in Syracuse. This project will manage more than 1,148,000 gallons of stormwater annually.
Onandaga County has another interesting stormwater project in Jamesville, at the county’s correctional facility. Here stimulus funds will pay for a green roof, one of four different roof technologies that will be evaluated in this demonstration project.
The Hudson Valley area of New York received about $7 million in federal stimulus funds for clean water projects. In one of the largest grants, the State University of New York at Purchase will receive $2.1 million to build a 24,000-square-foot green roof. It will be built over the plaza, a large hard-surfaced area that acts as a roof for campus facilities. The new roof, with planters, will decrease stormwater runoff by about one third. “This is huge for us. It helps change the central infrastructure of our plaza,” says Geri Sanderson, the university’s spokeswoman.
Other academic institutions and libraries in the area have received stimulus funds for green stormwater projects. The Newburgh Campus of Orange County Community College will use its grant of $928,600 for a green roof (35,900 square feet), a rainwater harvesting system (30,000 square feet), a cistern (60,000-gallon storage capacity), and an irrigation system to reuse stormwater.
In Columbia County, $320,000 went to the Roeliff-Jansen Library for a green parking lot with porous materials, a bioswale, an infiltration pond, a vegetated swale, and a rain garden. These measures will reduce surface pollutants flowing to the Roeliff Jansen Kill, which is part of the Hudson River watershed.
The Haines Falls Free Library in Green County was awarded $284,800 for the construction of a 3,500-gallon cistern to store and reuse stormwater. This joint project also involves about 10,000 square feet of permeable pavement and two rain gardens totaling 750 feet in the nearby village of Tannersville in the town of Hunter. The project will reduce water usage by 45% and infiltrate approximately 500,000 gallons of stormwater per year.
One of the smallest stimulus project grants is $13,500 to the village of Greenwood Lake in Orange County. It pays for a 2,300-square-foot riparian buffer to be constructed adjacent to the area around the village’s lake to protect it from nonpoint-source pollution.
Greenwood Lake received another stimulus grant of $550,890 to reduce flooding and pollutant runoff to its lake. This project will reduce overall impervious surface by 30% through converting to pervious pavement and installing rain gardens, biofilters, and bioswales.
The Dutchess County Soil and Water Conservation District has been working with the towns of Beekman and East Fishkill to reduce stormwater runoff from their two town halls. A stimulus grant of $110,600 will be used to redirect stormwater from the roads and parking lots (an area of about 2.46 acres) away from Fishkill Creek and into bioretention and infiltration areas. This project will help protect the Hudson River Estuary watershed.
Among clean water projects in New York’s Southern Tier is the Green Innovation Grant of $821,500 to Chemung County Library District. The money will be spent to install a green roof on Steele Memorial Library in the city of Elmira. The project will reduce runoff by an estimated 265,000 gallons per year.
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Credit: City of Spokane
Plantings in curb extensions and other LID techniques will reduce CSOs in Spokane. |
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City of Spokane
Part of Spokane’s Surge area |
In Tioga County the Soil and Water Conservation District was awarded $736,132 to restore wetlands in the Susquehanna River Basin. The project will restore 227 acres of wetlands to treat stormwater runoff, improve wildlife habitat, and create wetland corridors for aquatic species.
Washington State
In the rainy northwestern United States, Washington state has plenty of stormwater projects to put its stimulus funds to good use. The state received $65.4 million for clean water projects, of which $13.6 million will be spent on “green reserve” projects.
“These high-priority projects provide clean water, reduce stormwater pollution, and enhance the quality of life that makes Washington a special place,” says Washington Department of Ecology director Jay Manning.
The city of Tacoma’s stormwater treatment retrofit project merited more than $1.8 million for new green infrastructure. The new offline media filtration vault will treat runoff from 41 acres of impervious surfaces in a 50-acre commercial/industrial drainage basin.
The city of Olympia received funds to develop the southern 10 acres of municipal Yauger Park land as green infrastructure. Bioretention ponds, a 5,000-square-foot rain garden, biofiltration swales, a wetland, porous pavement for a new parking lot, and water harvesting for irrigation make up the project. The area will be lowered by 3 feet to add about 13 feet of storage for runoff and provide enhanced treatment for 840 acre-feet of runoff per year.
Seattle is adding to its Natural Drainage System of stormwater management. The Venema Creek project will use LID techniques to reduce runoff and achieve total maximum daily load (TMDL) objectives in the most important subbasin of Seattle’s Pipers Creek. This is one of Seattle’s urban streams that is critical to the survival of salmon.
Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) has received a water planning grant to quantify water-quality improvements from the Natural Drainage System in Venema Creek. Data from this project, the first of its kind, will help direct the future application of LID techniques throughout Seattle.
SPU continues its Ballard Green Streets work with stimulus funds for a CSO basin retrofit. The project will include bioretention cells along 10 city blocks to reduce CSOs and lower energy demand on King County’s pumping station. Another grant to SPU will pay for a diversion structure and pump station in South Park, diverting and treating stormwater from a 236-acre basin.
The Taylor Creek Wetland Improvement project in King County will enlarge an existing wetland to twice its current size, approximately 2.5 acres. Native plantings and an improved piped outfall from the wetland are included; the project is part of the Puget Sound Wetland Restoration Program.
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Credit: City of Spokane
Features to be added as part of the Spokane Urban Runoff Greenway Experiment |
Spokane’s stimulus funds projects include one at Hazel’s Creek to demonstrate LID techniques, including a rain garden by the access road, a porous pavement parking lot, and a pervious walkway.
Two projects are part of the SURGE (Spokane Urban Runoff Greenway Experiment) initiative. The objectives of both the Lincoln Street and West Broadway projects to reduce runoff to the combined sewer system and reduce CSO discharge to the Spokane River through plantings in curb extensions and other LID techniques.
Bremerton’s Stormwater Retrofit/LID project is in an “ultra urban” part of the downtown. Designed to reduce runoff to 303(d)-listed Sinclair Inlet, the project will use stimulus money to fund permeable paving, biofiltration, and bioretention techniques.
North Carolina
In North Carolina, the city of Charlotte received stimulus funds for two big stormwater projects. In the McAlpine Creek watershed, the city will create a 28-acre conservation area with its $2.2 million grant. More than 6 acres of wetlands and over 7,300 linear feet of street along Muddy Creek and Eastland Branch will be restored as a habitat for wildlife.
A stimulus grant of $577,555 will be used to build a 2-acre lake at Revolution Park. The captured runoff will be filtered and reused for irrigation. Stormwater will be held to near-predevelopment purity, thus protecting Irwin Creek from pollutants.
The town of Carolina Beach, its aging facilities further taxed by more and more visitors, received $2.3 million to build two 5-acre stormwater wet detention treatment ponds and force main and stormwater pump stations. Showing that its leaders are thinking ahead, the ponds are designed for the future build out of the project area, which will eventually equal 40% impervious area. The project is to cope with current and future runoff from the Wilmington Beach area.
Carolina Beach’s second stimulus grant of $1 million will be used to replace old sewer lines through the downtown area. This project involves 2,652 linear feet of 8-inch sewer, 1,380 linear feet of 10-inch gravity sewer, plus manholes, laterals, and other components.
In the town of Burlington, the Kernodle Center drains runoff from a 5,400-square-foot roof into the storm sewer. A new stimulus-funded rainwater harvesting system will keep that runoff out of the storm sewer. The city of Raleigh is also spending stimulus funds on systems for rainwater harvesting and reuse at 11 fire stations and one animal shelter.
Many of the stormwater projects across the country are of the nuts-and-bolts type, not as pretty as rain gardens nor as trendy as permeable pavers, but essential. They involve replacing outdated sewer lines that served smaller populations with bigger lines and for removing worn-out pumps or service connections and installing new ones.
Typical of these projects is one for $280,600 in Columbus, NC. The funding will be used to replace about 35 manholes on the Miliken sewer interceptor. Those manholes were found to be sources of stormwater inflow into the sewer system.
The Midwest
Midwestern rain storms can be intense, producing major flooding, sending polluted runoff into small and large waterways, and causing CSOs. In Kansas, the Department of Health and Environment secretary, Roderick L. Bremby, was pleased with $35 million in funding for 15 Kansas stormwater projects. (That’s in addition to $29 million for 12 wastewater collection and treatment projects announced earlier.) The federal funding will cover almost the entire cost of the projects.
“Were it not for the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, it might have been many years before these necessary projects were created,” says Bremby.
Hays, KS, will build a hybrid detention and infiltration basin with native plantings to manage stormwater along a major city street. The city of Lenexa can spend $1,073,430 to reengineer a streamway, construct a wetland, add native plants, and build an irrigation system to reuse stormwater.
A Wichita project will receive the $1,993,000 needed to replace a regular 60,000-square-foot roof with a green roof and add an irrigation system. The city will fund a porous pavement parking lot for the same building.
Johnston County Community College can now afford the $867,413 needed to change a large pervious parking lot into one that infiltrates stormwater. Constructed wetlands, rain gardens, bioswales, infiltration basins, and landscaping with native plants are LID strategies for the project, which will be educational for the college’s students.
At Kansas State University, the Center for Child Development will use $454,700 to install porous pavement, bioretention cells, and a water harvesting system for irrigation to manage stormwater onsite. The cities of Shawnee and Mission received stimulus funds of about $400,000 each to help manage stormwater onsite. They will employ LID techniques of bioretention, rain gardens, native plants, bioswales, and vegetated swales. Mission will also harvest rainwater for reuse.
The city of Bonner Springs will employ bioengineering techniques to stabilize streambanks, mitigating erosion into Spring Creek in a local park, costing about $127,000. The Kansas Water Office will use the same practices on a larger scale, stabilizing 10 portions of the Neosho River and restoring riparian buffers. The project will cost about $863,000 and will reduce sedimentation in a public water supply reservoir.
Another Midwestern stormwater project is rather unusual. After the last University of Michigan football game of the season was played in Ann Arbor in November 2009, workers replaced tailgaters across the street from Michigan Stadium. Under the north lawn of Pioneer High School, they installed underground tanks to clean the stormwater that moves through the Allen Creek watershed to the Huron River. Reseeding the lawn and planting new trees were included in the $3.1 million dollar project. Stimulus funds will pay for about 40% of the cost.
Thirty miles from Chicago is the suburb of Aurora, IL. The city will receive a stimulus fund loan of $1,137,278 for replacing three major water mains. The mains are 50 to 60 years old, break often, and can’t maintain adequate water pressure.
Aurora will also receive an ARRA loan of $4,373,880 for a major combined sewer separation project. The project is designed to reduce the number and duration of CSOs and the frequency of basement backups.
As each community is focused for the present on its own stormwater management projects, it will be interesting to see in the years ahead how such a massive use of LID strategies influences the practice of stormwater management across the country.