Stormwater management tools put in place in Edmonston

Several bioretention facilities were constructed over the last three months to reduce runoff and pollutants entering the northeast branch of the Anacostia River in Edmonston.

The work was done by the University of Maryland, College Park’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders, the Anacostia Watershed Restoration Partnership and the city of Edmonston.

Engineers Without Borders primarily works abroad, but this time the group decided to partner with the University of Maryland, College Park’s A. James Clark School of Engineering to work on a problem a little closer to home.

The Anacostia is a highly polluted river, in large part due to urban runoff, the storm water draining from cities into the river, according to the National Resources Defense Council, a not-for-profit environmental protection group. The project team, consisting of students, faculty advisers and various professionals, designed a bioretention system and implemented it in a park owned by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission near Edmonston’s Decatur Street, which will be the first “green,” or fully environmentally responsible, street in Maryland.

The bioretention facilities take runoff water, in this case from parking lots and roads, and naturally treat it, said Kristen Markham, 21, one of the project leaders and recent UM graduate, who is returning in the fall for graduate school. The team designed trenches where the water could travel into the 15 feet by 30 feet bioretention area. There, the storm water goes through several natural filtering systems, including several layers of soil that help the water flow quickly, gravel, rocks and plants. Each technique naturally filters out pollutants.

While the budget for the project has yet to be finalized, the total was close to $8000, Markham said. Most of the cost was covered by the $5,000 grant the team received from the Chesapeake Bay Trust. Engineers Without Borders raised the remaining amount of money through fundraisers and donations to College Park’s chapter by putting on presentations for different departments at the University and corporate sponsors.

The bioretention facility is part of the “green” agenda in Edmonston. It’s “an initiative we have to do town business as sustainably as possible,” said Mayor Adam Ortiz. “To do what we do already in a better way. To be better stewards of our environment.”

Ortiz said the bioretention facility diverts storm water from the parking lot and road near the Edmonston Recreation Building into a natural filtration system.

“It’s a natural, passive way to treat runoff water that has pollutants,” Markham said. “It goes back into the river a lot cleaner than it was before.”

The students worked with Dana Minerva, executive director of the Anacostia Watershed Restoration Partnership, to complete the project. Minerva helped the team contact people and organizations to work with on the project.

The entire project, from deciding to work with the Anacostia to its completion, took only six months, including getting approval for the project, meeting with officials, getting a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust and implementing the design.

“This project is important because it shows that we can control storm water,” Minerva said. “We just need to have that great combination of idealism and practical implementation that the students showed in designing and building this bioretention project.”

“It’s a very exciting project,” Minerva said. “It is a model for others.”

Originally published at The Gazette. Thursday, June 11, 2009