It can be easy to miss what you’re not looking for.
Professor Dr. Fassman-Beck of the Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering department has been running the Living Laboratory for Stormwater Green Infrastructure (GI) at Stevens for years. You’ve never visited the on-campus lab? Well, it’s not necessarily a place. It’s a whole system.
Located around the North Building on upper campus are three rain gardens, a green roof, and four bioretention planters. There are also two rain gardens on Hudson Street, one at the corner of 8th and Hudson, and one between the two doors entering ABS from Hudson Street. If you’re baffled as to how you’ve missed seeing this major part of your everyday surroundings, just be on the lookout next time you’re walking on campus. It’s worth it.
The purpose of the Living Laboratory project? To engineer green infrastructure to solve urban stormwater problems. Ultimately, Fassman-Beck and her students want to measure real-world-applicable results by creating quantitative water quality data. This will help to progress and encourage green design and policy, potentially worldwide.
As quoted in a NASA article, green engineering expert and Virginia Tech professor Sean McGinnis said, “the ability of human societies to sustain our health, our quality of life and our environment is increasingly at risk due to resource depletion and emissions into the air, water, land and space. There are no simple solutions to this complex problem, and progress requires efforts by citizens, businesses, and governments at local, regional, national and global scales.” The living lab is working to provide such imperative solutions.
Two of the lab’s key undertakings include rain gardens and bioretention planters.
Rain gardens are created to manage stormwater runoff. Their engineered systems are used to imitate the natural hydrologic cycle, or the Earth’s atmospheric water pattern. They usually have a layer of engineered media — soil designed with specific measurable characteristics in mind — and then a variety of other layers and components in the area around it.
A well-structured rain garden can provide municipal benefits. It also can create a lush habitat for birds, butterflies, and other organisms, reduce runoff and flooding, and filter contaminants carried in runoff.
Yang Cheng, a Stevens second-year Ph.D. student studying Environmental Engineering, works on the on-campus rain garden. She says her biggest initial research challenge was that “our runoff collection system had its limit. It was unable to capture big storms,” which are defined as those which result in rain greater than 22 mm. Yet during this past summer, the team replaced it with a bigger collecting container that increased the system’s capability of capturing bigger storms.
According to a Groundwater Foundation article, “rain gardens are effective in removing up to 90% of nutrients and chemicals and up to 80% of sediments from the rainwater runoff.” This can prove especially useful because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that pollutants carried by rainwater runoff account for 70% of all water pollution. The research conducted at Stevens on rain gardens could be imperative in the future. Also, they just look nice.
The lab’s other main focus is on bioretention planters. These structures work much like rain gardens but are instead located in a concrete box. Since there is no disruptive exfiltration to the natural soils in the foundation, the box’s concrete bottom can be placed under virtually any downspout. Some benefits include the reduction of runoff, toxin removal, and overall aesthetic enjoyment. Sensors, incorporated into the planters, help researchers assess the overall effectiveness of the garden and answer research-related questions.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials website assesses that “planters are highly adaptable to most urban contexts and can be sized and modified easily to optimize infiltration rate in constrained spaces,” especially in areas on the street. Implementation seems fairly effective and practical. Right?
Not so fast. There is little knowledge of how bioretention planters should be built because they are much smaller than most rain gardens, and their actual effectiveness is disputed. This is where Stevens researchers come in.
Kiera Nissen is a second-year Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Water Resources. She researches the bioretention planters intently.
“Several buildings around Hoboken currently have green roofs,” she disclosed to me. There are bioretention devices installed along Hudson Street at nearly every corner. “They might just look like some nice plants,” she says, “but they do a very specific task, and I think it is cool to know what people are doing to solve problems.”
The EPA is researching bioretention, too. Although there are still testable unknowns, the research conducted at Stevens could soon be extensively implemented.
“There is a theory that if we can delay water before it reaches the sewer, we can prevent an overload of a system,” said Nissen. “For my first project, I am working on how long it takes for the rain to fall and the water to leave our bioretention planters.”
So far, Nissen feels proud of the progress the researchers have made. These green technologies implemented throughout Hoboken “weren’t in the plans when the buildings around them were developed, but there was a space and it was filled with the rain garden.”
She also feels hopeful about the Living Laboratory’s potential to be a leader in green tech research. “The more we know whether systems like this are ‘worth it’ even if it isn’t in the ideal place or conditions or size, I think is really useful. That is why I am so interested in the planters; if we can show that these can be an effective tool, it can be much easier to implement them than a rain garden or green roof, which have significant size and structural constraints.”
Philadelphia and New York City are leading the way regionally with green infrastructure plans such as tunnels, green roofs, and other stormwater management systems. With the help of Dr. Fassman-Beck, Hoboken is on its way.
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