UNO Rainworks Challenge

The UNO Rainworks Team, featuring myself along with graduate students Kevin Harrison and Bobby Evans and led by our faculty advisor Ben Shirtcliff, proposed a green infrastructure design to the EPA’s Campus Rainworks Challenge as both a functional improvement to the campus and its community as well as an educational opportunity for a unique region lacking adequate, locally relevant, quantifiable data to encourage best management practices (BMPs). / / This project has the support of a local non-profit community development organization Project Homecoming. Project Homecoming has committed to award a matching grant of $10,000 for the implementation of this project. / / As a member of this team, I designed the site and made the connection with Project Homecoming. / / Our proposed demonstration site will measure the effectiveness of BMP construction practices to effectively improve environmental quality, helping to create a model for urban infill projects in other deltaic regions—filling an important under-researched niche. / / The proposed demonstration site is highly innovative as it will: / • be the first element of green infrastructure built on the fifty year-old, 250 acre campus; / • incorporate necessary monitoring equipment, data management, and analysis to test the validity of BMPs in deltaic regions to remove pollutants, improve infiltration, decrease subsidence, improve evapotranspiration, and decrease runoff; / • serve as an important outreach tool to encourage the surrounding community to understand the benefits of upstream stormwater diversions to diminish persistent flooding and subsidence and improve water quality / / The project was submitted to the EPA in December 2012. The award date is April 22nd, 2013. /