Understanding Water Quality, Vegetation Establishment, and Stakeholder Success for The Fargo Project: A Multi-Stakeholder Led Community-Based Green Infrastructure Project.

The Fargo Project is a dry detention basin that holds stormwater drained from urbanized and impervious areas that serves as a component of a greater stormwater infrastructure network. The project goals were to design a multi-use green infrastructure area that would invite neighboring residents into the basin. From its conception, the project has relied on partnerships between stakeholders. A survey was developed and deployed to all stakeholder groups that participated in the community-based project to access stakeholder success. The Fargo Project was viewed as a success by most stakeholders. Project partners felt that the basin?s main goal was to serve a functional purpose as well as contain natural habitat that provided a resource to the community. This new knowledge expands on the traditional top-down governmental approach and allows more input from stakeholders. One goal of The Fargo Project was to establish native vegetation in the bottom of the basin. A study was established using five different native seed mixes planted in four replicates in the spring of 2016. Four years after planting many of the native species used in the treatments, even though planted at high densities, failed to persist or were at levels below 4% cover. Flooding during the germination and establishment phase negatively affected the long-term persistence of planted native species. This study determined that native plantings within dry detention basins come with challenges atypical to restorations in other natural habitats. Water quality at different vertical elevations within The Fargo Project basin was investigated. The vertical water quality was sampled after three large precipitation events at different stages within the basin: initial (first flush), at peak elevation, and outfall (as the basin drained). The water quality in two other dry detention basins were sampled for comparison. Most water quality analytes did not differ among the three detention basins except Total Suspended Solids which declined as the basin drained. The development of a passive vertical water quality sampling system using commonly available materials was effective at sampling vertical water quality in detention basins