Stormwater November/December 2015

N ovember /D ecember 2015 | www. stormh2o. com

T H E J O U R N A L F O R S U R FA C E W AT E R Q U A L I T Y P R O F E S S I O N A L S

The Practical Permeable Paver Greening Nashville LiDAR Technology Emergency Pipe Repair

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Stormwater November/December 2015 | Volume 16, Number 8 EDITOR Janice Kaspersen: jkaspersen@forester.net

FEATURES

MANAGING PRODUCTION EDITOR Brianna Duncan IT/ONLINE SUPPORT Steven Grimaud

8 The Practical Permeable Paver

WEB EDITOR David Rachford WEBMASTER Nadia English: nenglish@forester.net

Designers find creative ways to keep runoff onsite.

By Linda Robinson

ASSISTANT EDITOR Arturo Santiago DIRECTOR OF ONLINE MEDIA & IT John Richardson

18 Emergency Repairs Stopping a 40-foot sinkhole to save a highway

By Barbara Hesselgrave

GROUP EDITOR John Trotti: jtrotti@forester.net

26 In Tune With Green Infrastructure

SENIOR BRAND MANAGERS Mark Gersten, Geoff Solo, Eileen Duarte

BRAND MANAGERS Shane Stevens, Glenys Archer, Suzy Shidlovsky, Laine Wilkinson, Campbell Baker

How Nashville manages its occasionally erratic rainfall

By Margaret Buranen

COVER STORY

26

8

38 From the Ground Up

SALES & MARKETING COORDINATOR Carmody Cutter DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING SALES Adam Schaffer: aschaffer@forester.net GRAPHIC DESIGNER Deja Hsu SENIOR DESIGNER Tyler Adair

LiDAR technology helps manage water resources.

By Robert B. Sowby

PRODUCTION MANAGER Doug Mlyn ART DIRECTOR Judith Geiger

Cover photo: UniGroup

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DIRECTOR OF CIRCULATION Steven Wayner: swayner@forester.net PRODUCT MARKETING COORDINATOR, EDUCATION & TRAINING Phil Johnson: pjohnson@forester.net PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, EDUCATION & TRAINING Hayley Hogan: hhogan@forester.net

DEPARTMENTS

DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION & TRAINING Beth Tompkins: btompkins@forester.net

6 Editor’s Comments

48 Spotlight

56 Marketplace

44 Project Profile: Cleveland Clinic Protects Wetlands

50 Project Profile: Saving More Lives During Hurricane Season

56 Advertiser’s Index 58 Reader Profile

ACCOUNTANT/CHAIR, LOVE & HAPPINESS COMMITTEE Courtney Keele

SIGN UP For Your Free Subscription

FINANCE & HR MANAGER John Pasini: jpasini@forester.net

Go online for new subscriptions, renewals, or change of address: www.cdsreportnow.com/renew/now?stw

PUBLISHER Daniel Waldman: dwaldman@forester.net

Or scan the code with your smartphone.

STORMWATER (ISSN 1531-0574) is published eight times annually (bimonthly with an extra issue in May and October) by Forester Media Inc., 2946 De La Vina Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93105, 805-682-1300, fax: 805-682-0200, e-mail: publisher@forester.net, website: www.foresternetwork.com. Periodical postage paid at Santa Barbara, CA, and additional mailing offices. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Entire contents ©2015 by Forester Media Inc. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Stormwater, 440 Quadrangle Drive Ste E, Bolingbrook, IL 60440. Changes of address can be completed online at www.cdsreportnow.com/renew/ now?stw or mailed to 440 Quadrangle Drive Ste E, Bolingbrook, IL 60440; please provide your mailing label or old address in addition to new address; include zip code or postal code. Allow two months for change. Editorial contributions are welcome. All material must be accompanied by stamped return envelopes and will be handled with reasonable care; however, publishers assume no responsibility for safety of art work, photographs, or manuscripts. Every precaution is taken to ensure accuracy, but the publishers cannot accept responsibility for the correctness or accuracy of information supplied herein or for any opinion expressed. Subscription rates: Eight issues of Stormwater are $76 per year in US ($95 in Canada, $160 elsewhere). Send the completed subscription card with a check to Stormwater, 440 Quadrangle Drive Ste E, Bolingbrook, IL 60440. Reprints: All editorial material in Stormwater is available for reprints. Call 805-679-7604 or e-mail reprints@forester.net for additional information. List Rentals: 1-800-529-9020 ext. 5003, dfoster@inforefinery.com. Articles appearing in this journal are indexed in Environmental Periodicals Bibliography. Back issues may be ordered (depending on available inventory) for $15 per copy in US ($20 in Canada, $35 elsewhere). Send written requests for back issues along with check or money order in US funds payable to Stormwater, PO Box 3100, Santa Barbara, CA 93130, USA. Provide address for where copies should be shipped. Allow six weeks for delivery.

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CONFERENCE DIRECTOR Scott Nania: snania@forester.net

AR/AP Keith Rodgers

53 ShowCase

44

CONFERENCE SALES & MARKETING Brigette Burich: bburich@forester.net

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EDITOR’S COMMENTS

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Something Even Bigger: StormCon 2016

By Janice Kaspersen

Y

ou still have a few weeks left: If you’re planning to attend StormCon 2016 in Indianapolis next summer, there is still time to send in an abstract to be considered as a speaker as well. The deadline for submitting abstracts is Wednesday, December 9.

StormCon is the only North American event dedicated exclusively to stormwater and surfacewater professionals. It will be held in Indianapolis, IN, August 22–25, 2016, and for the first time will be co-located with another large show that also attracts attendees from the municipal arena: WASTECON, the premier solid waste industryfocused conference, put on by the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). Many of the same high-level public works officials have responsibilities in both the stormwater and solid waste arenas. Holding the conferences in the same place allows attendees to get the best of both worlds in the joint exhibit hall and in the educational sessions, and gives exhibitors and speakers at both shows access to a much wider and more diverse audience.

This year StormCon seeking abstracts in seven conference tracks: BMP Case Studies. This track presents examples of how structural and nonstructural best management practices (BMPs) are being used, with case studies and performance data. Topics include filtration systems, retention and detention systems, post-construction stormwater management, urban retrofitting, and inspection, maintenance, and repair of BMPs. Green Infrastructure. This track includes low impact development techniques as well as smart growth and other green infrastructure practices that strive to maintain or mimic the predevelopment hydrology of a site by infiltrating, storing, filtering, and evaporating stormwater runoff rather than moving it offsite. Areas of focus for this track include infiltration and bioretention practices such as rain gardens, green roofs, and porous pavement; community-wide and watershed-scale approaches to water quality; rainwater harvesting; and green infrastructure for infill development and redevelopment areas.

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Roger Bannerman

Environmental Specialist Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Madison, WI

Laureen M. Boles President E4Progress Philadelphia, PA

Dave Briglio, P.E. Stormwater Program Management. This track covers many aspects of managing a successful municipal or industrial stormwater program.

Focus areas include strategies for meeting permit requirements, building public education and outreach programs, hiring and working with consultants, illicit discharge detection and elimination programs, and integrating the stormwater program with TMDL development.

Advanced Research Topics. This technical track includes academic research; methods for testing the effectiveness of best management practices and comparing different BMPs; and topics and trends in stormwater research, such as standardizing testing protocols and standards for measuring the effectiveness of BMPs. Water-Quality Monitoring. This track focuses on watershed assessments, determining pollutant loadings, effective water-quality modeling, sampling tools and techniques, and bacterial detection and identification.

Industrial Stormwater Management.

This track covers industrial stormwater management and permitting, focusing on publicly and privately owned facilities covered by industrial stormwater permits or EPA’s stormwater multisector general permit. Such facilities range from small businesses located in urban areas, such as restaurants and automotive repair shops, to large sites such as manufacturing plants, transportation facilities, and mining operations.

Stormwater Management for Solid Waste Facilities. An offshoot of the Industrial Stormwater Management track added because of this year’s co-location with WASTECON, this track deals with stormwater management for all phases of solid waste operations. Topics include managing stormwater at municipal waste receiving, processing, and transfer facilities; good housekeeping practices for collection vehicle fleet maintenance facilities; managing stormwater on operating landfill sites; and selection, installation, and maintenance of stormwater management systems on closed landfill sites.

For more information, including the complete call for papers and an online form for submitting your abstract, visit www.StormCon.com.

Senior Water Resources Engineer EA Engineering, Science & Technology Inc. Hunt Valley, MD

Dirk S.G. Brown, J.D. Regulatory Compliance Advisor Department of Public Utilities City of Columbus, OH

Patrick S. Collins, P.E. Engineering Department Director/ City Engineer Valdosta, GA

Thomas R. Decker, P.E., M.S.C.E. Director of Water Resources Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. Morristown, NJ

Gordon England, P.E. Cocoa Beach, FL

Bruce K. Ferguson, FASLA Professor & Director School of Environmental Design University of Georgia Athens, GA

Jerry Hancock, CFM Stormwater and Floodplain Programs Coordinator City of Ann Arbor, MI

Tom Hegemier, P.E. Senior Project Manager Alan Plummer and Associates Austin, TX

Masoud Kayhanian, Ph.D. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California Davis, CA

Brant D. Keller, Ph.D. Director of Public Works and Utilities Griffin, GA

G. Fred Lee, Ph.D., P.E., B.C.E.E., F.ASCE President G. Fred Lee & Associates El Macero, CA

Gary R. Minton, Ph.D., P.E. Stormwater Consultant Seattle, WA

Betty Rushton, Ph.D. Environmental Scientist Gainesville, FL

Elizabeth Treadway Senior Consultant AMEC Earth & Environmental Greensboro, NC

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Pine Hall Brick

The Practical Permeable Paver Designers find creative ways to keep runoff onsite.

BY LINDA ROBINSON

Cliff’s Cottage at Furman University

O

ne of the goals set down by Furman University and Southern Living magazine when they began brainstorming the showcase home called Cliff’s Cottage was sustainability on an everyday basis. They wanted to demonstrate total sustainability while educating people on how to put the technology and practices to use in their everyday lives.

Scott Johnston, landscape architect and owner of Johnston Design Group in Greenville, SC, explains the original goals for Cliff’s Cottage, located on the university’s campus in Greenville. “There were three areas of importance to Southern Living magazine and Furman University. One was related to the occupant’s health and wellness. The second goal was economics though energy and water conservation.

Designs included geothermal, low energy use and smart power, and rainwater that was collected in a cistern for use in the gardens. And finally,” he adds, “the materials had to be manufactured or obtained locally.”

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In an almost unheard-of goal, they also specified the designs had to use materials that would make the entire home and outdoor space permeable. “Except of course, the roof,” clarifies Johnston. “That entire job site, from the time your feet leave your car, is 100% permeable.”

Johnston’s design firm is nationally recognized for designs in sustainable landscape architecture. He followed along and worked with the design and landscape architect on the project, Mark Byington. Byington is part of the Innocenti & Webel firm, based in the Carolinas office in Tryon, NC. Johnston acknowledges that, with designs that include permeable surfaces and water storage onsite, a lot can go wrong. He stresses the importance of communication. “You have to really commit to working closely with your architect to make it successful.”

The 3,400-square-foot house had the potential for many challenges, but instead met each of the three goals. Seven years in the making allowed for the designers to carefully select the appropriate materials and incorporate them into

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Johnston Design Group

sustainable technology and house and garden design. The designs for the walkways and gardens used permeable clay brick pavers, permeable concrete, and reinforced pea gravel.

“Each product was selected for infiltration and aesthetics,” says Johnston. “Both were important, as all permeable surfaces onsite drain into landscaped areas.”

The walkways and terraces are made with Pine Hall Brick Company’s StormPave pavers. Approximately 1,000 square feet of the pavers were installed. It was also important that the pavers met the goal of being aesthetically compatible with the university’s Georgian style on campus.

The Pine Hall open clay brick paver system helped achieve that goal. The system satisfies sustainability goals by allowing water to infiltrate, but also to be collected and used for garden irrigation. The system helps decrease stormwater runoff and controls, or eliminates erosion.

“Water is collected in perforated pipes, and then some is stored and some released to the garden areas,” explains Johnston. “In the ornamental gardens, they’re using native plant species in ornamental ways. They’re using the water from the permeable areas there.”

Additionally, he says, Furman has a large horticulture department that teaches sustainable, organic gardening.

“They have a large organic vegetable garden there, and receive water from the building and from Furman Lake for irrigating the vegetables. And just in case there was some emergency overflow, it would move from the ornamental

Cliff’s Cottage on the campus of Furman University

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garden down to the Furman Lake. It’s designed that way.�

Cliff’s Cottage was later renamed the David E. Shi Center for Sustainability, and it has become a leading think tank where students, educators, and community members can gather to learn and teach about how to implement sustainable practices into daily living.

The project received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. “All of the

permeable features had a lot to do with that Gold certification,� notes Johnston.

LEED was developed in 1998 by the US Green Building Council as a means of providing voluntary strategies to reduce energy and wasted resources from building construction and site designs. The Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute lists permeable interlocking concrete pavements (PICPs) as being eligible for LEED credits. PICP limits runoff and water

Parking area at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Charlottesville, VA

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pollution by managing stormwater, thus helping to meet the LEED criteria for a sustainable site. Finally, because the third goal of the project limited the distance from which resources to be obtained, the project met LEED requirements under for construction in which at least 20% of building resources are manufactured within a radius of 500 miles of the project.

In terms of challenges on the Cliff’s Cottage project, Johnston says they found the reinforced pea gravel tends to move around some, but when it’s all finished, it settles itself out. So, the only real challenge turned out not to be much of a challenge.

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When developers talk of remodeling large stretches of industrial space in Virginia, chances are they’re looking at Richmond’s warehouse district.

But when Riverbend Development construction manager Joe Simpson spoke of having a vision for an expansive Coca-Cola building, his project was located in Charlottesville, where industrial space is meager and historic sites well protected.

The Coca-Cola bottling factory, designed by Washington DC architect Doran Platt, was originally built on Preston Avenue in 1939. It was designed to be an Art Deco-style, two-story reinforced concrete factory

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Eagle Bay

that was faced with brick. In 1955, the factory got an additional one-story brick warehouse that served as bottle and crate storage; in 1981, a cinder block warehouse was added. The result for Riverbend Development when it purchased the property was 38,000 square feet of historical industrial space. Additionally, the famed architecture of the Art Deco era had earned the building a place on the National Register of Historic Places, which made the renovation work much more sensitive for planners.

Riverbend pushed right on through with the purchase at $2.7 million, with plans for offices, retail stores, and a rambling area for a beer hall, to encompass 6,000 square feet including a bar and seating for 250 occupants indoors and 150 more seats outdoors with ping-pong tables and bocce courts. A 28,000-squarefoot parking area was included in the plans, using PICP. Bob Bridges of Eagle Bay USA explains how the plan fit with Virginia’s requirements for runoff reduction measures. “A level 1 design treats one inch of rainfall, which satisfies the waterquality portion [of the stormwater requirements]. And with a Q10 rain event [a storm with a probability of occurring once in 10 years], when 51⠄2 inches of

rain in a 24-hour period is treated before release—it satisfies the quantity treatment or volume treatment requirements. So in Virginia, PICP is a standalone BMP. It satisfies both quality and volume.�

He adds, “This project was just robust with LEED credits, of course.�

Eagle Bay’s SWM Pave system was selected, and Aqua-Bric 4 “L� pavers were installed. This system meets Virginia’s level 1 and level 2

design requirements. The L-shaped bricks interlock and meet requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act as well. The bricks can be installed by machine or hand set.

The permeable pavement portion of the Coca-Cola parking lot took the Eagle Bay crew five days to install, Bridges says. “On average, we should be able to do 8,000 square feet of permeable pavement a day,� he says. “On this job we really didn’t have

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any challenges of any kind, so it went very smoothly.”

Iowa’s State Fairgrounds What began in 1854 as a small state fair in Fairfield, IA, has grown into the largest single event in the state.

Currently located in Des Moines, the Iowa State Fair draws a million fairgoers annually from around the globe and is considered America’s most famous state fair.

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The park-like fairgrounds include 450 acres and an adjoining camping area with an additional 160 acres for RVs and tents. In an effort to provide parking for fairgoers and vendors, along with a grass and lawn area for events at fair time, the ISF board decided to install Grasspave2, a porous flexible paving system, in one of the area’s trouble spots.

“The space was designed to give the fairgrounds a multipurpose space for events and parking without compromising the grounds in the process,” explains Trever Ewalt. “The previous space was sparse grass due to the heavy fair traffic and would turn into a very messy area with any precipitation.”

Ewalt is a project manager and

The famed architecture of the Art Deco era had earned the building a place on the National Register of Historic Places, which made the renovation work much more sensitive for planners.

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Country Landscapes

nearly 600 exhibitors. All of this fun, unfortunately, generates a lot of waste and trash. The fairgrounds maintains an aggressive recycling operation and in 2014 alone recycled more than 54 tons of waste.

“The project is being installed in two phases,” says Ewalt. “The first phase was roughly two-thirds of the total and was installed in about two weeks—aggregate, irrigation, Grasspave2, and sod. The next

commercial project designer in the Commercial Landscape Division of Country Landscapes in Ames, IA. “The biggest problem was the overall aesthetics and functionality of the space,” he notes. “There was a very sparse stand of grass, and in a rain event, the space was practically unusable.”

Since 1981, Country Landscapes has been designing and installing custom landscapes across the state of Iowa. With locations in central, eastern, and northern Iowa, it has provided landscape design for residential, public, and commercial sites.

Installing Grasspave2 from Invisible Structures, Ewalt says, provided an attractive solution and eliminated the stormwater problem. The system provides a stable surface for parking, driving, and walking while preserving a lawn-like, grassy landscape.

It has load-bearing strength and protects the vegetation’s root systems from severe compaction. High void spaces throughout allow root development and storage capacity for rainfall. This was the kind of system the fairgrounds needed.

The 44,150 square feet of Grasspave2 is only a portion of the overall project. In addition, Ewalt says, roughly 7,000 square feet of Aqua Roc II permeable pavers from Belgard were installed in a roundabout area, all part of the fair’s movement toward more ecofriendly grounds. The Iowa State Fair is known for having the world’s largest livestock shows and the largest art show in the state. In the grandstand area alone, entertainment and outdoor concerts bring in stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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phase will take a little less time to install. But the fair wants to add more Grasspave2 to the project if the budget allows.”

During installation, the project was blocked off by construction fence and treated as a construction site. The fair remained fully functional and weekly events continued as normal, which made vehicular traffic and site access difficult for workers at times.

Ewalt says some of the events were so popular and heavily attended that ISF officials asked that construction activities cease for a few days, at intervals. “We were able to work with the fair on these requests and still get the project done in a reasonable timeframe.”

The largest environmental challenge the system will face is the hot and dry Iowa summers. The system has an underground irrigation system to help the grass survive under these conditions.

“This particular system will be put to the test in mid-August when the Iowa State Fair is in full swing. Aside from heavy pedestrian traffic, the system will also experience traffic from a number of different vendors.”

He adds, “The fair has plans to use this open space to showcase its ag equipment and RV vendors. During other events—concerts, trade shows— the site can be used as parking for event goers. In between events, the fair will have an attractive green space.

The Grasspave2 system will also keep the area drier during rain events.

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“The turf areas will receive the routine maintenance as a normal lawn would, like mowing, fertilizing, and irrigation.

This will be enough to keep this area looking great for years to come.”

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Oregon Bicycling and Pedestrian Program Bend, OR, with a population of 76,693, is located in Deschutes County along the Deschutes River and on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountain range. Tourism is one of Bend’s largest economic engines, generating revenues of $570 million in 2011 and employing roughly 16% of the area’s workforce. With 23.8 inches of annual snowfall, the area is popular for downhill and cross-country skiing. Bend is also known for rock climbing, fishing, hiking, camping, and especially biking.

Assisted by an Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) grant, the city has completed roadway improvements to vital downtown corridors.

The project that runs along NW

Riverside Boulevard and NW Franklin Avenue is part of an ODOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Program designed to showcase state-of-the art, multimodal transportation safety. The project will increase the number of people walking and bicycling within the corridor while also providing additional stormwater management for the area.

Jeff Potts, P.E., with WHPacific Inc. of Bend explains some of the problems the project helped correct. “Bend is very bike-friendly, and this is a very popular park area.

But previously it was uncurbed. So stormwater was sheet-flowing into the grassed lawn of the park, resulting in ponding on park walkways,” he says. “This project was funded by the ODOT grant to increase pedestrian and bicyclist safety within the Riverside Road Corridor along Drake Park.”

The Riverside Franklin Pedestrian and Bicycling Infrastructure will serve an important east-west connection across Bend’s downtown area and provide access to Drake Park, the

WHPacific Inc.

“The turf areas will receive the routine maintenance as a normal lawn would, like mowing, fertilizing, and irrigation. This will be enough to keep this area looking great for years to come.”

Road improvements in Bend, OR, include a bicycle and pedestrian corridor.

Deschutes River Trail, and the Galveston Corridor. Drake Park is a 13-acre park, and the scenic Deschutes River,

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known also for white-water rafting, runs its north-south course through the city. Bend has more than 300 miles of mountain bike trails, with 51 of them being “in town” trails. The tracks and river routes are home to multiple running and biking clubs and competitions and have earned Bend the title of “Top Bicycling City” by Mountain Bike Action magazine.

One aspect of the project was to add curb extensions with permeable pavers, buffered bike facilities, shared arrow lane markings (“sharrows”), enhanced lighting, and landscaping that unites the parks and nearby neighborhoods.

Some of the bicycle amenities, including buffered bike lanes, green bike lane markings, covered bike parking, and floating vehicle parking, was provided

by Kittelson & Associates.

WHPacific proposed using Xeripave pavers from Ultrablock, which fit the project’s specific infiltration and durability requirements, Potts says. “The city of Bend, in conjunction with Bend Metro Park and Recreation, made the final selection based upon how they would complement existing and pro-

posed features of the park.”

He explains, “Our design allows for local storage of runoff within rock galleries, up to a two-year storm event. In the event that rainfall exceeds the rock galleries’ storage capacity, runoff will flow along the curb line until it’s collected at the downstream catch basin.”

The city chose Xeripave Super Pervious (SP) pavers to use along the curbs. Each paver is 300 millimeters, or just under a foot, square and 90 millimeters thick. The pavers were placed in a 3-foot-wide curbside application. Sloping the asphalt toward the curbs allows stormwater to flow to the pervious pavers. Kevin Spencer Masonry installed approximately 1,000 square feet of the pavers. In total the project should infiltrate approximately 10,250 square feet of stormwater for the city.

“The city’s initial scope of services required investigating both permeable pavers with rock galleries, and conventional pavers with catch basins and dry wells,” says Potts. “As the design and review process unfolded, pervious pavers became the favored option because of their overall cost savings and ability to minimize damage to local root systems.”

Trees located nearby were an important consideration during the excavation of the rock galleries, Potts notes. “Ensuring that the rock gallery excavation did not damage the root system of nearby trees was a priority.

We reviewed all root exposures onsite to determine the best course of action and reduced the rock gallery depth or width if necessary.”

Preparation for the pavers to be installed included a native soil subbase, a geofabric impervious layer, a sub-base layer of 33⁄4 inches of open-graded rock, a base layer of 11⁄2 inches of open-graded aggregate, and a bedding layer of 1⁄2-inch opengraded aggregate.

“This layering configuration was selected to provide a suitable foundation for the pavers, while also allowing the necessary infiltration rate,” says Potts.

Linda Robinson is a journalist specializing in agriculture and land-use planning.

stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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iStock/tfoxfoto

Emergency Repairs Stopping a 40-foot sinkhole to save a highway

BY BARBARA HESSELGRAVE

F

looding, sinkholes, danger, suspense, a race against time, and Mother Nature—this story is not the latest adventure film served up by Hollywood, but it could be! In 2013, the reallife saga of the stormwater pipe collapse of Birmingham’s Highway 280, one of Alabama’s busiest roadways, has every element to rival an action blockbuster.

Location Is Everything (Especially in Stormwater Management) The collapse occurred in an upscale shopping area called The Summit, which is appropriately named for its high elevation and spectacular view of the Appalachian mountain ridges. This 1-million-square-foot retail environment opened in 1997 and is considered Birmingham’s premier shopping and dining destination. The Summit is a luxury environment of manicured grounds and high-end stores, but it also has more than 100 acres of impermeable surface—parking lots and roofs. Runoff from the site flows to a detention pond at the bottom slope of the shopping area.

Charles Malone, assistant area administrator of maintenance and a 40-year veteran of the Alabama Department of Transportation, describes the situation: “So here we have this nice, manicured grass area, beautiful flowers, trees, and landscaping, and we get a call one morning that 18

there is suddenly a 40-foot sinkhole.”

In retrospect, Malone says he knows that the sinkhole didn’t happen overnight, but was the outcome of a series of events that were most likely progressing to disaster “for at least a few years.”

But at the time no one knew this, he explains.

“The detention pond has a concrete overflow pipe, and this connects with a junction box down in the pond. When the water level increases, it flows into the pipe and connects down into a corrugated pipe system that is 65 feet underground and passes under Highway 280,” says Malone.

This six-lane, divided highway that interchanges with Interstate 459 near The Summit makes it one of the busiest arteries in the state. But because of the elevation of the shopping center, the stormwater system at The Summit collects runoff and then drops 65 vertical feet underground, connecting to the transverse pipe under the road that exits almost 500 feet away into a receiving lake that is situated on an AT&T corporate campus.

This design makes it a closed system on both ends, which Malone says does not allow for routine inspections because there is no way to get in at either point. And inaccessibility keeps problems concealed and undetected.

Malone speculates that the pipe collapse had already occurred much earlier than the development of the

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sinkhole. He surmises that when the detention pond experienced previous flooding and required repair a few months earlier, it was probably an early warning that a much more severe problem was developing underground.

“While it was in this stage of being partially collapsed, it was pulling materials down from the top, and we think this was creating a kind of cavern effect up on the surface. You didn’t notice it to start, but eventually with enough materially falling away underneath, it finally collapsed from the top, then sunk down 10 to 15 feet and grew to 40 feet in diameter, and then this started filling up with stormwater because it couldn’t go anywhere else.”

But he says the deterioration created significant impact.

“After 30 or 40 years, that pipe was rusted and corroded, and the weight of the overburden caused it to collapse. It wasn’t just dirt, but rocks and boulders from the fill material,” which had created an urgent situation. The corrugated metal pipe was likely made of galvanized steel, as it was the standard coating of that time. Since then, several premium coatings have been developed that provide 75 years or more of service life.

But while this flooding sinkhole got everyone’s attention, there was no clue to the true damage. Malone immediately called upon Video Industrial Services Inc., which had assisted the DOT in another high-profile shopping area, to enlist the company’s help and assess the full scope of the damage.

The Painful Process of Discovery Rodney Blackmon, executive vice-president and general manager of Video Industrial Services, says the company’s reputation and range of services for “tough projects like this” made it a good choice for both diagnosing and helping to fix the stormwater system damage at The Summit.

Video Industrial is an affiliate of Carylon Corporation, a Chicago-based company that specializes in multiple maintenance services to help municipalities, utilities, and industries with environmental compliance. The company has a played a role in assisting local efforts to manage diverse events

“A lot of rocks had come down the pipe. When we got into the storm pipe, it was 80% full and blocked at the outfall. There was a very small air gap.”

stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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Photos: Russo Corp.

Boulders and debris from the collapse

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such as the flooding of the Chicago Loop from a breached underground tunnel, numerous floods and hurricanes across the Gulf Coast, cleanup at the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, and many others.

“We do all kinds of cleaning, dewatering, and sludge removal, and our video inspection services in this case were absolutely key to the cleanup and repair strategies of the pipe collapse,” says Blackmon. “When we were first called

by Charles Malone at the Alabama DOT, we thought it was a sewer line that had washed out part of a pipe, thinking that eventually the pressure pushed the pipe in, and when that fell in, it sealed up the pipe. Naturally, the pond would start filling up.”

He says the first step prior to any camera inspection was to gain access to the pipe system. Crews pumped water from the sinkhole on the Summit side, but soon after that there was a massive rainstorm.

“We had our little pump going, and it wouldn’t touch that

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FOCUSING ON A FLY Video Industrial Services uses the latest technology, which Philip Bell describes as “miniature cameras that are on 2,000-foot cables that can pan, tilt, circle around, and almost look behind it.

These new cameras are so sophisticated, you can remotely focus in on a fly, and the new external LED lighting make it so much brighter, you get a much better picture now.”

From a remote truck, he says, a video operator guides the unit, which can be on small wheels about the size of child’s toy wagon, or can be put on a float in a water scenario. The video operator can then stop the camera, focus, and capture important screenshots at nearly any angle.

The technology is light years from where it was just a few years ago, he says, and these units give accurate, low-intervention assessments of problems, accessing areas too challenging or dangerous for people to attempt.

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November/December 2015 | stormh2o.com

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The old pipe had collapsed and twisted.

underground stormwater storage

amount of water,” he says.

“At this point Malone was trying to get contractors lined up, because he knew that the sewer had collapsed. This new storm came in and washed out part of the detention pond’s earthen dam, and it flushed huge rocks and debris out, which ended up closing one of the roadway exits. If the whole dam had washed away it would have hit the highway and pushed cars off into the ravine. In just a couple of hours it was overflowing like crazy,” says Blackmon.

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InvisibleStructures.com 800-233-1510 Compaction grouting was injected around the failed section of pipe to make a safe work area. stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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However, no work strategy could be planned until the video inspection assessed the entire system, which by necessity had to be done in piecemeal efforts as obstructions had to be cleared in stages.

Getting the Real Picture of Problems

Looking down into the 72-inch-diameter stand pipe at The Summit. The orange hoses are being used to pump water from the bottom of the stand pipe.

Installing the liner plates

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This process was literally an eye-opener to the extent of the problem. Philip Bell, division manager at Video Industrial Services, describes the view when crews examined the outflow on the AT&T end.

“A lot of rocks had come down the pipe,” he says.

“When we got into the storm pipe, it was 80% full and blocked at the outfall. There was a very small air gap.”

He explains that typically crews can use high-pressure water-jetting equipment to clear away water and debris.

“These machines are designed to flush out a manhole then extract the water and debris, but we couldn’t do that here because we couldn’t disturb the lake water on the AT&T side, since it’s used for chiller water. We could not create any turbidity, which further restricted our efforts.”

The company instead used industrial vacuum trucks. “We moved yards of material,” says Bell. “We would normally take these very large rocks out in the day and the smaller stuff at night. We were working day and night and we had to be careful to not scratch any of the property trees on the AT&T side, although we did have to take a few down.”

Crews put the camera in as far as they could, but after a few hundred feet the space was too small to go farther, so the next stage involved pumping down the upper inlet, putting the camera on a float, and pushing it in downstream.

“Right past the junction pipe there was a big, twisted piece of corrugated storm pipe that was up inside the line.

It had elongated, curled up, and was wedged in place,” says Bell. He adds that the pipe had stopped 150 feet from where it had come loose.

Removing this source of the problem was essential to any further work, so after cleaning around the pipe to free it up, crews burned holes into the metal, put in a clevis, and using a very powerful winch, pulled it free and out of the line.

“You can’t hurry in a situation like this,” says Bell. “We were mindful of the timetable, but you can’t put people in jeopardy. We talked to our company president to advise him what we were doing, and his advice in this—and any— project was ‘None of us is as smart as all of us,’ and he’s right; you need a lot a lot brains to weigh every possible hazard. We were very fortunate in that no one was hurt, but we do everything we can to minimize those risks.”

In the meantime, all work being done was subjecting the workers to water, and keeping the pond pumped down was essential to keep them safe from the hydraulic pressure of the groundwater and stormwater. Malone says they had access to a ditch, so the pumps took the water out of the pond and carried it farther down to a safe level.

Throughout this initial cleanup, Malone says, his other priority was “to keep the road safe.”

He says, “We got an emergency authorization letter signed by the state transportation board, which allowed us to seek bids for repairs.” Russo Corporation, a firm serving

November/December 2015 | stormh2o.com

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southeast states from Arizona to North Carolina and specializing in site work, foundation drilling, injection technologies, and underground utilities, was awarded the project.

And Now the Real Fun Begins Jake Brown, project manager from the Birmingham office of Russo Corporation, cites some figures that could quickly have created a hazardous situation for workers and compromised the work timetable. “When you have 100 acres of hard space [generating] stormwater runoff, as we did, a one-inch rainfall translates to 2.72 million gallons of stormwater.”

He explains that runoff from The Summit shopping mall drains into the detention pond in front of the property.

When the detention pond reaches a certain level, it overflows into an outlet pipe that flows horizontally over to the standpipe, the 72-inch-diameter vertical shaft that drops down 65 feet and joins with a horizontal pipeline that then

In the end, the initial 23-foot repair of the pipeline more than quadrupled, and workers ended up installing 85 feet of 72-inch-diameter tunnel liner plates. carries the water underneath Highway 280 and into the lake at the AT&T site.

With safety as the utmost priority and before any work was done, Brown says, crews built and installed a plug that was attached inside the 72-inch vertical pipe about 15 feet below the surface.

“This plug was essential to keep water away from our workers and keep them safe, and we also had a 65-foot vertical pipe attached so we could continuously pump water out as well.”

With the plug in place, which prevented water from entering the pipe to flow through to the AT&T side, the workers could enter at the outfall side and walk up to their work area.

Nonetheless, Brown says, “The rule was, ‘The minute it starts raining, everyone must leave the pipe immediately.’”

He notes, “Our plan was to go in and hand-tunnel through the collapsed section of pipe, which in this case had to be done like a mining operation.”

He describes the track they installed within the pipe as similar to those used in a mining operation, operated via a winch system. “This pulled a buggy in and out with the debris that was hand-loaded from the inside of the pipeline.”

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stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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The receiving lake on the AT&T campus after work was completed

The inlet at the pond on The Summit side after work was completed

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The material was removed in order to replace the existing failed pipe with 72-inch-diameter tunnel liner plates.

Russo selected tunnel liner plates manufactured by Contech Engineered Solutions. With a broad variety of pipe and pipe liner products, Contech specializes in helping engineers, architects, and owners find the correct engineered solution for drainage, erosion control, stormwater, sanitary, and wastewater treatment projects across the country. For this project, metal tunnel liner plates that come in five pieces, each 18 inches wide, were used.

These sections were brought in and then bolted together right over the existing pipe to create a new lining. The sectional approach was necessary to allow the workers a protected area under which to work.

Brown says Contech engineers the plates with pre-drilled holes so that grout can be injected to fill any exterior voids around the new liner that would have been created by the excavation required to install the liner plates.

It was a slow and precarious process, as the workers entered from the AT&T property and went more than 350 feet underground from the cleared area to begin the liner plate installation. The contractor had hung lighting and had fresh air continuously blown into the space.

Malone recalls the claustrophobic sensation of being inside the pipe. “When you looked back to the outlet, it looks like the diameter of a pencil, plus you’re going uphill and you’re still fighting the infiltration of groundwater. Not everybody could do this job.”

Before the installation of the tunnel liner plates, Brown says, crews used their drilling and grouting capabilities to drill 65 feet down, at an angle, from the outside surface to inject compaction grout around the failed section of pipe to provide safety for the installation of the liner plates. “We basically created a dome of grout around the work area.”

Malone adds, “This was a really smart thing to do, as this fills in the voids and the earth overburden.”

Stabilizing the area allows for the debris removal to be done in sections. “You couldn’t remove it all at one time because it would cave in.”

Once the workers had the liner in place, they could then remove any additional debris, allowing them to go forward and build another ring.

“You need one full 18-inch-long, 72-inch-diameter ring installed to start the tunnel, and that provides the safety to continue installing additional liner plates.” This is a “one way in, one way out situation,” says Brown, but once crews got started, they got yet another surprise.

“We were contracted to replace a 20-foot section of the existing horizontal 66-inch pipe, and a separate three-foot section of the same existing 66-inch pipe where it tied into the 72-inch vertical stand pipe, for a total of 23 feet.

We completed the 20-foot section, and then proceeded to repair the three-foot section that had settled at the point of connection to the standpipe. However, the existing pipe between the newly installed liner plates and the three-foot section of settled pipe was in bad shape, with numerous cracks and chips throughout. Therefore, because of safety concerns with this deteriorated portion of pipe, the

November/December 2015 | stormh2o.com

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decision was made to replace the remainder of the pipe rial that has passed the stringent testing of the New York with additional tunnel liner plates. So we had to go back Department of Transportation for the lining of culverts. to square one to address this.�

The company says that CentriPipe has a very low CouIn the end, Brown says, the initial 23-foot repair of the lumb rating and does not allow sodium chloride ions to pipeline more than quadrupled, and workers ended up pass through—especially important in regions where salt is installing 85 feet of 72-inch-diameter tunnel liner plates. used for road deicing.

After this process was completed, the final piece of the Brown likes the way the product performs. “One of the project involved relining the entire 487-foot-long horibenefits is that it’s a standalone. If you didn’t use the liner zontal pipe with CentriPipe, a centrifugally cast concrete plates, and applied it in thickness, everything behind it pipe liner system from AP/M Permaform. In this case can fail, but this product holds up structurally. Over the Permacast PL-8,000 pipe liner was used, a high-strength, years steel can corrode, but this stuff lasts.� abrasion-resistant and corrosion-resistant mortar. A speThe end result of all the work will deliver many long cific benefit of Permacast is its high adhesion properties years of life to the stormwater system of the The Summit. and its ability to stick to any surface.

Ensuring highway safety is also Malone’s priority.

Brown says the relining process is done with a Spin“We weren’t expecting this. It was a very unique situCaster unit that has variable speed and in rotating fashation, a closed system with no way to get in and make ion spins and coats the surfaces of pipe. It is retrieved by inspections; nobody suspected there were problems. Our the operator once the coating is cast evenly around the resources with Video Industrial Services and Russo were pipe interior. excellent, and I was very happy with the way they were “We had to make several passes, the first one was able to solve a huge set of problems, as we don’t have just to fill up the corrugations in the those internal state resources. They pipe, and then we went back and did were out there 24/7 keeping the road several more passes to build up to a safe and ensuring public safety, which uniform two-inch thickness the entire is a big concern.� length of the pipeline.� CentriPipe www.stormh2o.com Barbara Hesselgrave is a writer components leach no harmful chemispecializing in environmental topics. cals, and this is the only lining mate-

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In Tune With Green Infrastructure How Nashville manages its occasionally erratic rainfall

BY MARGARET BURANEN

N

ashville, TN, has a watershed of 311,212 acres. Annual rainfall is 48.5 inches. But those figures don’t mean much if what happened in Nashville on May 1–2, 2010— or something close to it—happens again.

That Saturday, 6.3 inches of rain fell in a 24-hour period. Over 12 hours on Sunday, the city received another

26

7.2 inches of rain. It was the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Nashville, and resulted in massive flooding.

In some sections of the city, cleanup went on for months afterward. Because of the flood, EPA even granted Nashville an extension of time for work related to the consent decree it had levied on the city.

“The May 2010 flood reinforced to us how important it

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Aerial Innovations of Tennessee

is to apply our stormwater regulations to new developments, and especially to the repair of flood damaged structures,” says Tom Palko, assistant director of the Stormwater Division, Metro Water Services (MWS).

He adds, “We aggressively pursued mitigation funding from FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] to purchase flood damaged properties and restore those areas to open space. We will continue to look for similar opportunities in the future. We need to do everything we can to mitigate structures that are prone to repetitive losses.”

“Rain in Nashville tends to be heavy and of short duration. The bottom drops out and we get a ton of rain,” says Sonia Allman, a former environmental compliance officer in the Stormwater Division of MWS and now the public information officer.

Allman, who has been involved in public outreach and other jobs related to various stormwater projects in Nashville, says that the Cumberland River presents her city with

challenges for managing its stormwater.

The river “has lots of tributaries and some very flashy streams.” Add in “a lot of floodplain areas, because in the 1950s and 1960s there were no regulations against building homes there,” she explains.

The city has bought a lot of homes in these floodplain neighborhoods, torn down the buildings, and left the land vacant. Building codes are stricter now, too.

“We require four feet above base elevation. FEMA only requires one foot,” says Allman.

Reflecting on the flood, Rebecca Dohn, low-impact development and sustainability coordinator for MWS, says, “One of the more interesting (to us) impacts on policy was the affirmation that our existing stormwater regulations were fairly protective. After evaluating our four-feet-above-basefloor-elevation requirement for residential, our stakeholder committee decided we were adequately conservative.”

Allman sees water quality as another challenge to managing stormwater in Nashville. Because water is plentiful, “people don’t always appreciate it and don’t want to protect it.

Our stormwater fee was just implemented in 2009. It’s only three dollars a month, but there was a big public outcry.”

Palko says funding “is a constant challenge. Currently we have a stormwater user fee in place that provides funding for our program, but those funds provide only a limited ability to construct capital projects to address stormwater concerns.”

Dohn sees another challenge. “The one-inch requirement will become a mandate in Nashville in early 2016. Middle Tennessee has a lot of karst topography, and it will be difficult to integrate green infrastructure in some areas.”

She adds, “Nashville’s challenge will be to give site designers flexibility, while still protecting water quality. In return, we hope our engineers will work creatively to design around a both a site’s constraints and its beneficial environmental features.”

Even with sudden heavy rains, Nashville is managing its stormwater through various chords that allow green infrastructure to resound. Acquisition of open green space, financial incentives for green roofs, revitalization of the city’s riverfront, and installation of Complete Streets and other public and private projects show that green infrastructure is humming along nicely in Nashville.

Music City Center To many people around the world, Nashville is synonymous with country music. As recording studios and musicians of other types of music moved there, the city acquired its nickname of “Music City.”

This name sings across one of the city’s major buildings, the Music City Center. As distinctive a landmark as the old Ryman Auditorium (from where the Grand Ole Opry’s country music shows were broadcast to a national radio audience), the Music City Center is Nashville’s convention arena.

The Music City Center has 1.2 million square feet of meeting and exhibition space. Certified LEED Gold, the building has solar panels and other measures that allow it to consume on average 20% less energy and 40% less water than similar buildings that are conventionally designed. stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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Music City Center, Nashville’s convention center, has one of the largest green roofs in the US.

Designed to mimic the rolling hills of Tennessee, the green roof above the Music City Center convention arena spans more than 4 acres and is one of the largest green roofs in the Southeast. The 175,000-square-foot roof is composed of 14 different types of vegetation.

The growing medium for that vegetation is rooflite Extensive MCL, from Skyland USA. Because the medium is so shallow—less than 3 inches—prevegetated mats from Sempergreen were installed.

Blended growing media were developed in Germany,

which has been at the forefront of the green roof movement. Skyland USA owners knew that such media was proven to work better than using local soils in Germany, so they decided to develop a similar product for the green roof market in the US. The proprietary blend of rooflite Extensive MCL contains mainly HydRocks, a ceramic material made by calcining clay at high temperatures. The final result of the process is an inert, non-degradable soil that is both all natural and very lightweight.

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are above the 5th and Main Condominiums, Terrazzo Nashville Condominiums, the Hilton Suites on 4th Avenue South, Werthan Mills Lofts, the Adelicia Condominiums, the AT&T Building/Plaza, Freeman Webb’s Green Hills headquarters, Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, Westview Condos, Morgan Park Place Condominiums, and the McCabe Community Center for Nashville Metro Parks.

One reason for the large number of green roofs is that MWS offers a credit for properties with green roofs that are located within the combined sewer systems area. The credit is applied to the monthly sewer charges for a property.

Music City Center

Garick manufactures the rooflite using the HydRocks made by Big River Industries. Because the clay comes from Alabama and Tennessee, it was within a 500-mile radius of Nashville, making the Music City Center project eligible for additional LEED credits for using locally sourced materials.

Stormwater runoff and condensation from HVAC equipment are collected in a 360,000-gallon rainwater cistern.

This strategy provides water for more than 500 toilets and urinals, irrigates outdoor landscaping, and keeps the runoff out of the municipal sewer system.

Nashville has a significant number of green roofs. They

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The maximum total credit amount equals $10 multiplied by the square footage of green roof installed. The sewer charges are credited for 60 months or until the maximum total is reached, whichever comes first.

The Public Square—and a Plan

medium for the plants is Carolina Stalite.

“Eighty-one percent of the plants at the Public Square are native to the southeastern United States, and 63% of them are native to middle Tennessee,” says Kim Hawkins, RLA, principal with Hawkins Partners.

Green infrastructure certainly resounds within Nashville’s efforts to keep open green space and to acquire more of it. The tool for focusing on open green space is the Metropolitan Bob Schatz Photography

Another impressive green roof is the one above Nashville’s Public Square downtown. It is part of a project designed by the landscape architecture firm of Hawkins Partners. Public Square was a major renovation of Nashville’s Courthouse, a 1930s Art Deco-style building.

The goal of the project was to create an open civic space and a gathering point for residents and guests to downtown. Music festivals and concerts held there draw thousands of residents and visitors annually.

The new civic square covers approximately 7.5 acres. The nondescript, impermeable surface parking lot became a five-level subterranean parking garage topped with a 2.25-acre green roof deck at ground level.

Rain that falls on Public Square’s green roof flows into a 57,000-gallon below-grade concrete tank. There it is filtered and used to irrigate the park’s landscaping.

Forty-three species of plants were used in the project. The growing

Public Square in downtown Nashville

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Nashville-Davidson County Naturally Open Space Plan.

To develop this plan, which focuses on the benefits to a community of having open land, the city worked with the national nonprofit group the Conservation Fund.

Hawkins Partners was a part of the planning team for the project. The plan was a joint public/private effort between The Land Trust for Tennessee and the Metro Government of Nashville and Davidson County. The plan was unveiled in November 2010.

The project involved creating an inventory of critical natural and cultural resources in the city’s entire 526 square miles. One pleasant surprise was that the inventory revealed Nashville had many more existing examples of green infrastructure than expected.

“It was the first time this had ever been done, and it really established a number of open space goals for us as a community to target,” says Hawkins.

The already-existing projects showed that green infrastructure was thriving in Nashville. Therefore developers, landscape architects, and other interested parties wouldn’t see green infrastructure as being suitable for other places, but too experimental for Nashville.

Nashville currently has 102 conservation easements on public lands,

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Hawkins Partners

totaling 470 acres, with an additional 1,300 acres of private land protected by 30 easements. The Nashville parks and recreation system has approximately 12,000 acres of open space, divided among 108 parks and 19 greenways.

The plan’s long-term goal is an ambitious one: the preservation of 22,000 acres of open space by the year 2035. That’s even more challenging in a city that is growing. (The 2014 estimated population for the entire Nashville metropolitan area was 1.73 million.)

Hawkins says that the plan’s goal is “pretty aggressive,” noting that about 6,000 of the 22,000 acres would be in parkland that Nashville would purchase. But of the 6,000 parkland acres, 4,000 acres have already been acquired.

Another revelation from the inventory was that Nashville needed more land for parks. Some areas of the city and county were drastically underserved for parks.

The 28th Street Connector is one of Nashville’s “Complete Streets.”

Hawkins said a resulting goal is characterized as “four corners, nine bends, and a heart of green.” That translates into a park for each of the four corners of box-shaped Davidson County, a park for each of the nine bends of the

Cumberland River, and a park in the downtown area, the heart of Nashville.

Another chord of green infrastructure in Nashville is struck by green streets that allow infiltration of runoff onsite or in adjoining areas. The city

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Bob Schatz Photography

has several such projects in place, with more to come.

Deaderick Street downtown was the pilot for green urban streets in Nashville and one of the first green streets in the Southeast. Hawkins Partners designed the project.

With the 13,000 square feet of landscaping and 1,200 square feet of pervious concrete added, the street now removes 95% of stormwater runoff compared to its level of volume reduction before construction.

Like Indianapolis and many other cities, Nashville is striving to be more 32

inclusive of various modes of transportation and to make its streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. In October 2010, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean signed a Complete Streets executive order to promote the development and installation of these innovative streets.

Complete Streets accommodate all users with separate, clearly defined, lanes for bicyclists and vehicles and with sidewalks for runners, walkers, and skaters. The parallel sections are separated by bioretention planters and rain gardens. These green features manage stormwater runoff from

the impervious surfaces of adjoining streets in highly urbanized environments. They also make the urban landscapes much more attractive.

Two impressive examples of Complete Streets in Nashville are the extension of Korean Veterans Boulevard from 4th to 8th Streets and the 28th Avenue Connector. Both projects were designed by Hawkins Partners.

The southern boundary of the Music City Center is Korean Veterans Boulevard. Its extension, covering 4 blocks, was completed in spring 2013.

Porous concrete was added for additional runoff infiltration. This Complete Street keeps 3.2 million gallons of stormwater out of the city sewer system annually.

The 28th Avenue Connector is a highly traveled boulevard that connects the north and west areas of the city. It was completed in 2012 at a cost of $18.5 million.

The project’s major challenge was “to incorporate all of the green street aspects within a very tight right of way,” says Hawkins. “We were bridging an area that was disconnected for 40 years and going over a railroad track.

Trying to acquire that property and get over the railroad track in as narrow a space as possible [wasn’t easy].”

Public art is included in the project.

Plants along the 28th Avenue Connector include inkberry, juncus, Siberian iris, black-eyed susan, and Princeton elms.

“We used more native grasses, and they are just beautiful there,” says Hawkins.

As for public reaction, Hawkins says the project “has meant so much in so many ways. It has connected neighborhoods and a number of our major universities, such as Vanderbilt with Fisk.”

The city required that Hawkins Partners include underdrains on all of these streets, “in case we didn’t have acceptable infiltration rates.

The streets have all exceeded the expected rates, so we were able to remove all of the underdrains,” explains Hawkins.

The Gulch Complete Street is in final stages of construction now. The Division Street Complete Street should be finished in spring 2017.

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New Parklands The Cumberland River divides Nashville and figures prominently in the city’s history. But as highways surpassed rivers for transportation, the riverfront area in Nashville—as is the case with similar areas in other cities—was empty and decaying.

In recent years Nashville officials have reexamined this neglected section of their city and grown to appreciate the potential of the land alongside the Cumberland. The renaissance of this section of downtown has let green infrastructure strike yet another chord in Music City.

Riverfront Park lies along the west bank of the Cumberland River. The site includes a 6,500-seat amphitheater topped with a green roof that measures approximately 3,000 square feet. The entryway to the amphitheater has 12,500 square feet of Hanover pavers for stormwater infiltration.

The 6,100-square-foot bioretention area at the front of Riverfront Park

is “the main focus as you enter the park,” says Brian Phelps, RLA, senior associate with Hawkins Partners.

The bioretention area slopes to 5 feet deep. Plants growing in it include Itea virginica or Henry’s Garnet, Panicum virgatum or Shenandoah, Eupatorium dubium or Little Joe, and Ilex glabra shamrock.

Phelps notes, “Of the 11-acre site, 3.35 acres (30%) drains to one of two bioretention ponds designed to capture and treat the stormwater, and another 5 acres (45%) is captured in a 375,000-gallon custom-built concrete storage vault to be used as irrigation onsite.”

Adding to Nashville’s emphasis on open green space is an open area in the center of the park that measures about 4 acres. Below this ground is the park’s geothermal system.

The biggest design challenges for Riverfront Park, which earned LEED Gold, were “making sure space would be available under the artists’ wing —terraces down the slope work well

for this—and that we had a mandate early on to capture as much stormwater as possible,” recalls Phelps.

Cumberland Park, formerly a riverfront wasteland, is now a family park. Located on the east bank of the Cumberland River, the 6.5-acre park is part of a 120-acre revitalization area.

“Public Square and Cumberland Park were giant parking lots. Being able to heal those areas whose previous existence was asphalt was very rewarding,” says Hawkins.

Rain that falls on Cumberland Park is collected into a concrete (nonproprietary) 100,000-gallon tank.

Approximately one million gallons is available for irrigation at the park and the nearby Bridge Building.

The restored Bridge Building has restrooms and a concession stand for visitors to Cumberland Park. Offices for Metro Parks and nonprofit environmental groups now occupy the building, which is deeply connected to Nashville’s history.

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Aerial Innovations of Tennessee

Riverfront Park

When the Cumberland River made development of the city possible, the Bridge Building served as the headquarters of the Nashville Bridge Company. It was in the midst of barge-related construction and other river-connected commerce.

The restoration project by Hawkins Partners earned a LEED Platinum rating. Pervious pavers by Nitterhouse and native plantings allow stormwater infiltration.

One of the most impressive projects in Nashville—public or private—is The Pinnacle at Symphony Place.

This innovative project is its own symphony of green infrastructure. It was completed in 2009.

The Pinnacle is a 29-story office and retail building with a 19,000-square-foot green roof. It replaced a dreary paved parking lot that sent stormwater runoff into the city’s overworked sewer system.

The Pinnacle’s green roof is on the 34

seventh floor above the portion of the building that includes the parking garage. The complexity of the plant material was challenging, because the client desired a more diverse landscape than that found on a typical green roof.

The outdoor space includes 9,400 square feet of Hanover pedestal pavers. They were chosen to reflect sunlight and lessen the heat island effect.

The vegetated sections of the roof total 19,000 square feet. These roof areas are a combination of extensive green roof (planting media depths ranging from 5 to 9 inches) and semi-intensive areas (planting media depths ranging from 18 to 30 inches).

Thirty-six different species, including 16 species of sedum, were planted. “Sedums are well-suited for rooftop environments,” says Phelps.

He adds, “The plant material has evolved, and some species have really taken over. Ansonia drifts are growing

in the sedums. We’ve got wild strawberries, which we never expected,” as well as other plants that must have sprouted from wind-borne seeds.

The Pinnacle’s beautiful green roof includes 9-foot-tall trellises made of ipe, a renewable hardwood from Central America. Vines—wisteria and autumn clematis—twine around the trellises.

“The trellises are to provide scale, the same spatial definition that trees provide,” explains Phelps.

The sections of soil that are up to 30 inches deep, near the seating areas, also support multitrunk serviceberry bushes. These plantings are functional, helping to absorb stormwater, but they also provide a relaxing natural world in the midst of a highly urban location.

That natural place among other tall buildings has grown into a habitat that attracts many birds and insects.

“I’ve seen a hawk on a guard rail, and doves will nest there,” says Phelps.

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For related articles: www.stormh2o.com

MWS spent $2.8 million on two sewer extension projects to eliminate homes on septic tanks, several of which were failing. An additional $282,019 was spent on a state project, done in conjunction with the nonprofit environmental organization Cumberland River Compact. The group’s members built rain gardens, planted trees, improved riparian buffer zones, and performed community education work.

It’s obvious that Nashville has a number of outstanding and innovative stormwater management projects. Dealing with sudden heavy storms and the demands of the consent decree will be challenging, but easier if green infrastructure helps keep Music City in tune.

Margaret Buranen writes on the environment and business for several national publications.

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About 67% of the stormwater that falls on The Pinnacle is mitigated. Besides keeping 560,000 gallons of runoff out of the city sewer system annually, the green roof reduces the heat island effect in the urban location.

Phelps says that the most challenging aspect of the project was “dealing with the expectations of the client for what the landscape was to look like. It was balancing the stricter requirements for a green roof with the expectation [that the roof area would] be more like a streetlevel landscape.”

Noting the size and complexity of The Pinnacle project, Phelps says, “We thought it important to provide maintenance guidelines. The owners know that maintaining it is not the same as maintaining a landscape on the ground.”

Phelps sums up The Pinnacle project by declaring that it’s “a much better space than the parking lot that was here before.”

If Nashville property owners and developers need additional inspiration for adding green infrastructure, they can visit the Richard Fulton Government Complex. A demonstration site has been created there to showcase bioswales, permeable asphalt, porous concrete, and other BMPs. Runoff from up to a 25-year storm event is retained onsite and released at a gradual flow.

Nashville officials are waiting to hear from EPA about the final agreement and directives related to the consent decree. Green infrastructure will be a part—though how much is not yet certain—of the stormwater projects the agency will require that the city complete.

Meanwhile, instead of paying the full fine levied by EPA, MWS has “agreed to conduct and has completed supplemental environmental projects to improve public health and the environment,” says Allman.

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From the Ground Up LiDAR technology helps manage water resources.

BY ROBERT B. SOWBY

A

AGRC

the reflected signal. LiDAR technolt the western base of The Need for Data ogy was developed soon after lasers Utah’s Wasatch MounA major resource to help manage in the 1960s, and now its decreasing tains, a narrow urban water in Utah is the state’s Autocosts and higher precision are making strip approximately 120 mated Geographic Reference Center it more appealing for a variety of uses miles long and 6 miles (AGRC), which maintains an online wide is home to 80% of the state’s repository of spatial data for mapping from military and transportation, to meteorology and agriculture. LiDAR population. Known as the Wasatch and GIS. One important category is Front, this linear metropolis includes elevation and terrain data, usually in can be stationary (ground-based) or airborne with aircraft-mounted equipProvo, Ogden, Salt Lake City, and the form of digital elevation models scores of smaller towns and cities, with (DEMs). Much of the data is based on ment. Airborne LiDAR surveys provide continuous coverage over all types of a total population over two million.

LiDAR technology. terrain and large areas.

Managing water resources along the LiDAR is a remote-sensing techPrevious AGRC projects in 2006 Wasatch Front has long been a chalnology similar to radar. A hybrid of and 2011 captured LiDAR data at lenge. Since pioneer settlement in the “light” and “radar,” it is also written 6.6- and 3.3-foot horizontal resolution 1840s, water has nonetheless sustained lidar, Lidar, or LIDAR since consensus in parts of northern Utah. Still, no comits large population and productive on its status as a word or acronym plete dataset of sufficient detail was agriculture. In a climate characterized is yet to be reached. While radar available for the entire Wasatch Front, by cold, snowy winters and hot, arid uses radio waves, LiDAR measures where robust data were needed most. summers, water is of perennial interest. distance and color by illuminating a Tarin Lewis, a project manager at Reservoirs perched high in the mountarget with infrared laser pulses—up to Quantum Spatial (formerly Watershed tains capture snowmelt each spring 150,000 per second—and analyzing and help supply water Sciences Inc.) in Portland, through the summer OR, agrees that finer data were needed. The previous and fall. Streams and dataset was valuable, she ditches crisscross the says, “but there is a limitation valleys and pass through for further analysis.” neighborhoods, parks, A new, more detailed and commercial districts.

LiDAR project would benefit Ongoing land developseveral users, says AGRC’s ment requires larger Rick Kelson. The Utah withdrawals from surface water and groundwater, Geological Survey and US while growing wasteGeological Survey (USGS) were interested in mapping water and stormwater geologic hazards, particularly discharges threaten water the Wasatch Fault, before quality in fisheries and they are built over. The recreation areas. Dealing Utah Division of Emergency with the Wasatch Front’s Management and the Federal water issues has become particularly complicated Emergency Management in recent years as stakeAgency (FEMA) needed information for their Risk Mapping, holders work to manage Assessment, and Planning water across civic, hydroprogram. The USGS wanted logic, and topographic Digital elevation model of Mt. Olympus area, Salt Lake City, UT to update its 3D Elevation boundaries.

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Applications in Water Resources Among LiDAR’s capabilities are many applications for water resources, as users of Utah’s new data have discovered. The data inform the planning, design, construction, and operation of various water-related projects.

Lewis has observed several applications. “We’re seeing a huge increase in data being collected and used for updating floodplain maps, coastal changes, riparian conditions, and post-natural disaster changes for both natural and urban environments,” she says.

AGRC

Program and The National Map. Surveyors, planners, researchers, and developers were interested in updated topography, as were the Salt Lake County Surveyor’s Office and partner cities. Water engineers and utility professionals were also eager to use the data, which would be free to the public.

“There is a strong trend towards mapping our current environment as accurately as possible in order to better understand how potential future changes will impact our lives and natural resources,” says Lewis. “It was great to see a large group of stakeholders come together to fund such a project and decide to offer the data publicly.”

During 2013 and 2014, AGRC undertook an ambitious program to collect high-resolution surface data along the Wasatch Front. With the support of the aforementioned partners and Quantum Spatial, AGRC acquired 1,422 square miles of surface data with airborne LiDAR. The project covered Salt Lake Valley, Utah Valley, and additional areas along the Wasatch Fault from Gunnison, UT, to Malad City, ID. USGS conducted quality control before the data were published in September 2014. The purpose of this process was to ensure that the data sets met rigorous standards and were of sufficient quality for public access and scientific analysis. “Data acquisition, and all derivative products, met or exceeded all specifications,” the project’s final report says.

Available products include bareearth DEMs, first-return digital surface models (DSMs, which include buildings and trees), intensity rasters, and laser point clouds. DEMs and DSMs have a 1.6-foot horizontal resolution and 2.5inch vertical accuracy when compared with ground control surveys. Derivative datasets such as contours, hillshades, and slopes can be generated with GIS or CAD software.

The new data would be “put to work for a diverse set of uses,” an AGRC news release predicted, including “modernization of flood hazard maps, fault studies, transportation project design, infrastructure mapping, solar energy quantification, and tree and vegetation studies.”

First-return digital surface model (DSM) of I-15/I-80/SR-201 interchange in Salt Lake City

One example is stormwater. Utah engineers and utility professionals have used the new topographic data to determine drainage paths, identify flow barriers, and delineate watersheds.

One analysis for a portion of northern Utah indicated new areas that would be inundated in a 100-year flood.

The data have been especially useful in urban areas, where the topography has been most altered and the most runoff occurs. LiDAR detail is sufficient to capture curbs, driveways, channels, depressions, and other features affecting drainage, which may have been overlooked before. Hydrologists and engineers can more accurately model how stormwater will drain from the surface into a city’s collection system.

This application has led to reduced surveying and data collection costs for several utilities, as well as better assessments of downstream impacts and system capacity.

Bob Thompson, a watershed scientist with the Salt Lake County Watershed Planning and Restoration Program, explains how his department uses Utah’s new LiDAR data. “LiDAR can help us eliminate much of the background survey needed to design stream restoration projects,” he says.

“The resolution is so much better than the 2006 LiDAR we were previously using. I have used LiDAR to spotcheck surveyed elevations and create a [computerized] surface for a conceptual design.”

Thompson observes that LiDAR penetrates most vegetative cover and helps him characterize features not visible in aerial photography. “I have used LiDAR-based terrain to map stream channels where vegetation in aerial photos hides the stream channel,” says Thompson.

Riverine and floodplain models have been developed from the data since stream networks and grade breaks are apparent, especially with visualization tools. From the DEMs, engineers can extract stream profiles and floodplain cross-sections for one- and two-dimensional hydraulic analysis. The same information helps delineate floodplains and assess risks of flooding to life and property depending on the extent of a given flood scenario. One analysis for a portion of northern Utah indicated new areas that would be inundated in a 100-year flood. It also helped the local authority know what infrastructure should be constructed or upgraded to handle the associated flows and reduce the potential damage. stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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Natural River and Stream Channels Identified From DEM

based on impervious area.

“LiDAR intensity is underutilized and can be used to quickly assess permeability or impermeability of an area,” adds Kelson.

LiDAR has also assisted with site selection. In one case, a city needed to locate a site for a new 6-million-gallon water tank. Criteria included a parcel size of at least 3.7 acres to accommodate construction without excessive cut/fill or shoring requirements; preferably undeveloped land to avoid conflicts with constructed properties; elevation between 4,700 and 4,720 feet to match the intended pressure zone; and slopes less than 20% to ensure stability and access.

AGRC’s LiDAR data helped the city quickly narrow the list of eligible sites. Parcel data provided the shape and area, a DEM indicated the elevation, a derived slope raster gave the slope, and LiDAR intensity raster helped distinguish developed and undeveloped land. GIS tools streamlined the criteria evaluation and produced a summary of the eligible sites’ metrics. Engineers then examined aerial photography and other datasets to assess suitability before visiting short-listed sites in person.

When a tank site was chosen, initial planning and design relied on topography captured with LiDAR. With elevations recorded every 1.6 feet in a DEM, the site was characterized by over 70,000 points—detailed enough to substitute for expensive and time-consuming field topographic surveys in the early stages. Like Thompson’s application for stream projects, the DEM helped engineers prepare conceptual plans for the tank site and for new transmission lines to and from the tank, before proceeding with preliminary and final design.

Water system models and inventories have benefited from AGRC’s LiDAR project. When hydraulic models and early system inventories were originally developed, some relied on intermittent or inconsistent Data collected or derived in Salt Lake City: Aerial data patched together from outdated maps or operators’ photography (A), bare-earth DEM (B), hillshaded DEM (C), recollections. The new data—continuous and accurate first-return DSM (D), contours (E), and intensity (F) along the Wasatch Front, where many large systems are located—allow engineers and utility crews to verify or update elevations attached to pipes, meters, tanks, and other Lewis explains that investing in high-quality data is features in computer models and inventories. Databases for especially wise if the data can be used for multiple purposes. drinking water, secondary water, stormwater, and wastewa“LiDAR data has so many uses that when you’re planning ter systems have been updated with the new data to provide a project it’s important to keep in mind what you may need better accuracy and consistency. the data for in the future,” she says. For instance, if certain While reliable elevation data are welcome, other useful modeling or analysis could be necessary later, “it may be LiDAR products are available. Kelson emphasizes how the worth collecting an even higher-resolution dataset right from data include more than just elevation. the start to save time and costs.”

“The majority of people simply use the bare-earth DEMs Casey Francis of Aero-Graphics in Salt Lake City to generate contours and topography,” he says. “But there confirmed that traditional LiDAR is being used in stormis a wealth of information available in the first-return DSMs water, floodplain, and watershed applications. LiDAR, he and point clouds.” says, is “the most accurate, efficient, and cost-effective LiDAR intensity, for example, which is collected with survey method for capturing and modeling complex each LiDAR scan, has helped users identify impervious hydrological systems.” surfaces along the Wasatch Front. Intensity indicates the One limitation of standard LiDAR is its inability to penstrength of the return pulse based on the reflectivity of the etrate a water surface to capture features beneath. However, struck object. Roads, driveways, parking lots, buildings, and a more specialized technology called bathymetric LiDAR water bodies are easily distinguished from lawns, fields, and operates at a different wavelength (in the green spectrum) bare earth when examining an intensity raster. Such data and is able to seamlessly map the underlying bathymetry of may become the basis for assessing stormwater service fees river channels, lakes, and other shallow waters.

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“This technology has huge implications for civil engineering, habitat analysis, and natural resource planning,” says Lewis. “We’re excited about the increased interest in this technology over the past year, and don’t expect it to slow down any time soon.”

rivers, wetlands, and coastal marshes, plus developed cities and infrastructure. The district considered the LiDAR project a priority for managing water resources there. Lamar says that the district aimed “to not only create updated and more accurate flood maps but also obtain more detailed topographic and elevation Beyond Utah data for all of our jurisdiction in Utah is not alone in its embrace of northwest Florida.”

LiDAR for water resources manageAfter data collection, the district Natural river and stream channels ment. The Northwest Florida Water developed an online mapping system identified from DEM Management District, charged with to deliver the topography, imagery, responsibilities for water supply, and other geospatial information to water quality, flood control, and ecological protection in the public. “The primary focus was the ease of use and Florida’s Panhandle, needed better topographic information access to the imagery as well as the ability to create maps to fulfill its mission. through GIS and Web-based platforms,” says Lamar.

Like Utah, the district partnered with other agencies to The district completed the project in 2011 and continfund a comprehensive LiDAR project and share the data ues to benefit from the high-quality data it produced. “The district uses LiDAR data as the starting point for a variety publicly. “The need to develop accurate flood maps for the of projects,” explains Lamar, “including hazard-mitigation Panhandle led to the district working with FEMA and the planning and the implementation of mitigation projects, Florida Division of Emergency Management to acquire funding for the use of LiDAR technology,” says communica- emergency response planning, recovery and redevelopment projects, hydrologic and hydraulic projects, stormwater tions director Jim Lamar. The USGS and local communities master planning, and other environmental planning and also contributed. analysis projects.”

Topography in the Panhandle is complicated by many

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MPCA

Another organization that has put LiDAR to good use is the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), which used LiDAR in a statewide watercourse inventory completed in 2013. Over 160 years of development in Minnesota had modified, rerouted, or even created many watercourses, but the extent of the alterations was unknown. Monitoring and LiDAR hillshade of an unnamed Minnesota stream. Note the change in width and sinuosity from top to bottom. managing these resources was difficult without The MPCA wanted to catalog all adequate information. watercourses in the state and reliably “The State of Minnesota did not have a thorough accounting of streams determine which ones were natural or altered, but sending field crews to that have been altered,” says MPCA research scientist Benjamin Lundeen. inspect all 105,000 stream miles was impractical. Instead, the MPCA partPrior to the project, MPCA staff used nered with the Minnesota Geospatial several tactics to determine whether Information Office (MnGeo) to levera stream was altered. The process age new GIS and LiDAR capabilities. was subjective, time consuming, and The team first undertook a pilot produced inconsistent results.

project in three watersheds to assess the feasibility of using geospatial resources to complete the proposed inventory. The pilot project produced new reference data, GIS workflows, and a successful methodology. The full-scale project began in 2011.

“The objectives of the Altered-Watercourse Project were to develop a GIS-based methodology for determining stream channel alteration, which focused on visual interpretation of contemporary and historic aerial imagery, including LiDAR, as well as several other reference layers,” says Lundeen. “This methodology was used to review all of the national hydrography stream linework within the State of Minnesota.”

Statewide LiDAR coverage at 3.3-foot horizontal resolution proved

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Looking Forward Utah’s 2013–2014 LiDAR project has found a variety of uses, especially in the local water industry.

The effort has produced consistent, detailed spatial information where it is needed most. The new public datasets are “available for city planners, public utilities, nonprofit organizations, students, and anyone else who is interested,” says Lewis, and have already aided management

of water resources in the state’s most populated area.

LiDAR has many other potential uses, says Kelson.

“Some of these include vegetation metrics, canopy assessment, heightabove-ground measurements, solar potential, line of sight, infrastructure delineation, and feature extraction.”

Further applications include detection of faults and landslides and delineation of building footprints,

wetlands, and floodplains. With the data in the hands of innovative users, the possibilities are limitless.

“There are new applications for LiDAR data just waiting to be found,” says Lewis. “It would be great to see this dataset be a part of the next discovery.”

Robert B. Sowby is a project engineer and writes on water resources and the environment.

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to be indispensable in the process.

“LiDAR was used to determine whether a particular stream had ever been altered,” explains Lundeen.

“There are often telltale signs of alteration, such as soil piles or evidence of the old channel. This was also used to determine whether a stream would actually have water in the channel throughout the year. LiDAR data also provided visual evidence of old channels that were cut off as part of the alteration event.”

Among other criteria, LiDAR helped detect changes in channel width and sinuosity—a river’s natural S-shape. A straight, narrow, or otherwise unnatural shape was one indicator of an altered watercourse.

The project concluded that 50% of Minnesota’s watercourses were altered. Each watercourse was categorized as altered, natural, impounded, or indefinable.

Minnesota agencies have found several uses of LiDAR beyond the Altered-Watercourse Project. LiDAR has supported erosion analysis, wetland mapping, flood control, and siting of best management practices.

The MnGeo expects the uses to increase exponentially as LiDAR data become available for more areas of the state. The MPCA also expects increased use. “We anticipate a growing use of LiDAR dataset within the MPCA’s continued water quality and assessment work,” says Lundeen.

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Richard Washington, ASLA

PROJECT PROFILE

Cleveland Clinic Protects Wetlands With Permeable Pavers

F

ounded in 1921, Cleveland Clinic has grown to become one of the world’s leading medical institutions, integrating clinical and hospital care with research and education. It offers a multisite healthcare delivery system with facilities throughout Ohio, as well as Florida, Nevada, Canada, and Abu Dhabi, with more than 5 million patient visits per year.

Cleveland Clinic is ranked as one of the nation’s five best hospitals and places in the top 10 nationally in 13 specialties. It has also been ranked number one in heart care for 21 consecutive years by U.S. News & World Report.

With more than 20 million square feet of built environment in its portfolio, Cleveland Clinic feels a responsibility to set an example for other hospitals and businesses and take the opportunity to minimize the health impacts of climate change. As a leader in the medical field, it has pledged to investigate creative solutions to environmental

44

challenges that benefit the community and support economic health.

In 2008, Cleveland Clinic became the first healthcare provider in the nation to sign the United Nations Global Compact, and in 2014 it worked with the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Health and Human Services to develop a Climate Resilience Toolkit for Healthcare. With sustainability a top priority for its new construction projects, Cleveland Clinic has built 11 LEEDcertified buildings and has completed an additional four LEED-certified projects over the last eight years. Cleveland Clinic has established an Office for a Healthy Environment department and is working to enhance the resilience and sustainability of its facilities.

As a result of its commitment to the environment and community, Cleveland Clinic worked closely with environmental regulatory agencies on the development of the

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Richard Washington, ASLA

of the site, which would require importing a large amount of expensive fill to raise the grade by 5 to 6 feet and would also impact the wetlands. It was decided that a permeable interlocking concrete paver system would provide the most effective stormwater management for the site and come in at a lower initial cost than some of the other systems.

Both Washington and Craig Cawrse, FASLA, of Cawrse & Associates had prior experience with Eco-Optiloc permeable pavers produced by Uni-Group USA. manufacturer Unilock Ohio Inc. in Rittman, having installed them in their office parking lot seven years ago. As a result, they recommended them for the parking lots, drive lanes, and Aerial Aspect Photography

Richard E. Jacobs Avon Health Campus in Ohio. “As part of our ‘Healing in Nature’ concept, we want all of our patient areas to be in natural settings as much as possible,” says Brian Smith, director of strategic project development at Cleveland Clinic. To better serve the needs of the community, Cleveland Clinic decided to build a new, five-story, 221,500-square-foot “hospital of the future” on the north side of this existing family health center. The new Cleveland Clinic Avon Hospital will be the only Cleveland Clinic hospital connected directly to an established family center.

The design of the project began in 2013 with a large design and construction team. Architects Westlake Reed Leskosky, landscape architects Cawrse & Associates Inc., civil engineers CT Consultants Inc., and environmental consultants Davey Resource Group collaborated on the project design.

“With nearby EPA-protected wetlands and an already restricted site, it was a challenge to meet stormwater management requirements for the project,” says Richard Washington, ASLA, of Cawrse & Associates. “We considered a number of design options, such as a parking garage to limit the footprint of the parking areas, bioswales, permeable pavement, and/or underground detention systems.”

Washington notes that the site is very flat and surrounded by shallow streams with mapped floodplains that would require any stormwater management system to be built up above grade. The lowest point in a traditional retention basin would have been above the existing grade

The site of the new Cleveland Clinic Avon Hospital stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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Photos this page: Richard Washington, ASLA

connector roads for the project.

“The Eco-Optiloc pavers have proven to be durable and will stand up to a variety of traffic conditions,” says Washington. “Initially, there was a learning curve for the client and the construction manager, Gilbane Building Corporation, to understand that the permeable paver system was very competitively priced compared to traditional asphalt paving and a traditional stormwater management system.

However, we were able to demonstrate that with the Eco-Optiloc pavement, we could minimize the extent of the site’s impact while accommodating their parking requirements.”

The Eco-Optiloc permeable pavement project was presented to the US Army Corps of Engineers as a stormwater management system located adjacent to the wetlands that would provide effective water-quantity and -quality mitigation. The Corps supported the use of the permeable pavers over a traditional stormwater management system.

Davey Resource Group, the environmental consultant for the project, was instrumental in securing wetland 46

permits and reducing the wetland impacts for the project. Civil engineers CT Consultants worked with Drew Snoply, commercial sales manager at Unilock Ohio, on the design of the permeable pavement crosssection, which is based on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources design guidelines and Unilock’s recommended standard section.

They also developed all stormwater

calculations for the site per regulatory requirements.

The design features a 12-inch subbase of ASTM No. 1 and 2, a 6-inch base of ASTM No. 57, and 1.5-inch setting bed of ASTM No. 8. The joint fill is an ASTM No. 9 stone. The depth of the subgrade preparation varied based on existing soil conditions, which were poor and required the use of soil cement for stabilization. Geotextile fabric was placed at the vertical walls at the limits of the aggregate base. The base section was designed to store stormwater in the voids of the stone, with 6-inch perforated pipe and multiple outlet control structures designed to release stormwater to meet typical discharge rate limits. The stone volume and control structures provide water-quality treatment and flood control for the 10-year critical design storm through the 100-year storm event and match predevelopment discharge levels for less frequent storms. The existing parking lots for the original building feature bioswales, and a drainage channel passing through the site was realigned and restored to provide additional stormwater capacity for the area. Unilock also provided technical guidance recommendations on deicing and vacuum sweeping maintenance to help ensure the pavement continues to function as designed.

Construction of the new hospital began in the fall of 2014, and the Eco-Optiloc permeable paver parking

Top: Placing the Eco-Optiloc pavers; Bottom: Aggregate base and perforated pipe

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realities of vehicular parking can sometimes dominate design, the permeable paver solution allowed us to construct parking lots that blend in with the site and do not present themselves as a ‘sea of asphalt.’”

Unilock is proud to have provided the Eco-Optiloc pavers for this important project. “It has been a pleasure working with the design team and Cleveland Clinic on their newest health center and helping them meet

5Se N ss e ion w Se rie s!

their goals of sustainability and environmental protection,” says Snoply.

“From both the environmental viewpoint, as well as aesthetics, we are very pleased with our investment in what has turned out to be a very large permeable paver parking lot,” says Smith. “We look forward to the financial returns as well, as we anticipate our lifecycle maintenance costs to be well below those associated with an asphalt lot.”

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lot was started in the spring of 2015.

Paver installer Gator Construction Inc. worked with Unilock and general site contractor Precision Engineering and Contracting Inc. on the installation, which was done mechanically, providing significant cost savings over manual installation.

The Eco-Optiloc paver features an L-shape configuration, which is ideally suited to mechanical installation. The project was a challenge for the design team and site contractor because it took place around a functioning family health center. The new hospital footprint removed the emergency department drop off, the helipad, and an existing parking lot with 400 spaces. A new relocated emergency department entrance and helipad were the first phase of construction, and a temporary onsite parking lot had to be constructed to replace the lost parking spaces.

The Eco-Optiloc permeable paver parking lot is being constructed in five phases around the temporary lot, which will eventually become permanent. This process maintains approximately 900 useable parking spaces at all times. Once the project is completed, there will be a total of 1,516 parking spaces, of which 850 will be paved with permeable pavers.

Approximately 345,000 square feet of Eco-Optiloc in a charcoal color will be in place upon completion, which is scheduled for the end of this year.

The Cleveland Clinic Avon Hospital plans to accept its first patient in the fall of 2016.

“Throughout this process Cleveland Clinic was very supportive of the permeable pavement system,” says Washington.

Smith from the Cleveland Clinic notes, “The Avon site was a real opportunity to provide minimal impacts to the nearby wetlands. Our permeable paver installation was exactly the right solution at the right time. Although the

Gene L. Rovak, P.E., CFM, F.ASCE, CFM

Senior Project Manager Horner & Shifrin, Inc.

B R I N G I N G YO U CU T T I N G -ED G E TECH N O LO GY A N D TO O L S –A NY T I M E, A NY W H ERE

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Spotlight

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PROJECT PROFILE

Saving More Lives Is in Sight During Hurricane Season

BY JOANNE CASTAGNA

trees due to high winds, and indirect impacts like carbon monoxide poisoning and electrocution, can cause deaths.”

“The development of these maps is the first step in the hazard analysis for the hurricane evacuation study process,” says Cresitello.

As the hurricane evacuation study managers for the National Hurricane Program, the Army Corps is responsible for creating these maps. The maps, which are officially named the “New York Hurricane Evacuation Study Hurricane Surge Inundation Maps,” are being produced in collaboration with the Army Corps’ New England and Baltimore Districts.

The Army Corps provides these maps to emergency managers in New York City, Westchester County, and Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island, NY. The Army Corps also guides emergency managers on how to use these maps by providing the maps in a hurricane decision-making software entitled HURREVAC (Hurricane Evacuation), developed by Sea Island Software for the National Hurricane Program.

Cresitello says, “Agency officials can use these maps to Photos: USACE

“H

urricane Sandy represented one of the largest-scale evacuations declared in recent history in the United States,” says Edward Schneyer, director of emergency preparedness with the Suffolk County (NY) Office of Emergency Management.

“During Sandy, we rescued 250 people from their flooded homes, evacuated two major hospitals and several adult homes,” says Schneyer.

He says he was able to do this effectively because his agency has storm surge maps created by the US Army Corps of Engineers, New York District. Storm surge is when a significant amount of water is pushed from the sea onto the land by a hurricane.

These maps provide emergency managers in all hurricane-prone states an understanding of the potential for the extent of storm surge that could occur for worst-case Category 1 to 4 storms, identifying areas from which people should evacuate if faced with the threat of storm surge.

Presently the Army Corps is updating these maps with higher-resolution modeling and topography performed by NOAA’S National Hurricane Center’s Storm Surge Unit, so agencies will have more accurate information to educate the public, thus reducing risk to themselves and their property.

“Historically, 49% of human causalities from hurricanes are due to storm surge,” says Donald E. Cresitello, USACE Hurricane Evacuation Study program manager for the State of New York, US Army Corps of Engineers, New York District.

“Other impacts like riverine flooding due to rainfall, falling

This map, which shows a portion of the Connecticut shoreline, is an example of a storm surge map.

The map shows the extent of surge that can be expected as a result of a worst-case combination of hurricane landfall location, forward speed, and direction for each hurricane category.

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help reduce risk to the public. They can use them for evacuation planning, to redefine their hurricane evacuation zones, identify where shelters should be located, and identify where assets should be staged prior to impact from a storm.”

Schneyer says, “The storm maps serve as a very valuable resource for both government and private sector agencies, as well as private residents.

As a government agency tasked with emergency management responsibilities pertaining to evacuation and sheltering of the public, we use the maps to gain insight and perspective into the geographical area impacted and use this information to determine the number of buildings or population potentially impacted by a flood.”

A page from the interactive website that the Suffolk County Office of Emergency From this information his agency Management created for its residents, using the information from the US Army Corps of can also pre-identify damage assessEngineers storm surge maps. The public can use the site to locate their residence, see if ments even before the storm impacts their home is in a hurricane storm surge zone, and if so which shelters are near them. the region. Suffolk County, where Schneyer manages, has approximately 1,000 miles of shoreline, and its hurricane evacuation those resources,” he says. zones contain 225,000 residents.

These maps are a tool not just for agencies, but also for The new maps, like previous ones, are being created the general public. Schneyer says, “These maps provide an using GIS (geographic information systems). GIS uses important level of awareness to residents that either live in data from various sources, such as aerial photography, and a flood area or are preparing to purchase property located combines these layers of information in various ways to in a potential flood zone or hurricane storm surge zone.” perform analysis and create maps. (See the sidebar for Schneyer’s agency is bringing this awareness directly to additional information). its residents, taking the information from the Army Corps’ The new maps will be a considerable improvement maps and entering it into an interactive mapping program from the older maps, because they will have higherdeveloped and viewable on the county’s website. resolution storm surge modeling data and topography that Members of the public can visit the website to locate will provide greater detail and accuracy. The new maps will their residence, see if their home is in a hurricane storm show not only the extent of inland storm surge, but also the depth of the water—in ranges of feet—during different categories of storms.

Using GIS to Create Higher-Resolution In addition, the maps will illustrate areas that will experience Storm Surge Maps more flooding and areas that will experience less flooding.

“Knowing what the depth of water may be in those IS is being used to create the higher-resolution storm surge maps. areas helps emergency managers better perform their It is a computer-based information system and tool capable of capturing, storing, analyzing, and displaying location information. GIS takes initial response after a storm and helps them know what data from various sources such as aerial photography, and combines kind of impacts they may expect during these types of these layers of information in various ways to perform analysis and storms,” says Cresitello. create maps.

As a result, emergency managers can better focus their To create the higher-resolution storm surge maps, higher-resolution limited resources. “As emergency managers dealing with storm surge elevation information from NOAA’s SLOSH model (Sea, Lake, Overland Surges from Hurricanes) is being layered over higherthe recovery effort and critical decision making, these resolution LiDAR-based topography—land elevation information—in storm maps provide the geographical area of primary the GIS program ArcGIS, which is used by the Army Corps. concern where efforts and resources need to be focused “To come up with the actual depth of water through GIS, we are to make essential and accurate damage assessments to overlaying the data out of NOAA’s SLOSH model and subtracting out the determine life and property hazards,” says Schneyer. ground elevations using digital elevation models and coming up with “In the initial stages of a response our recovery an actual depth of water in feet,” says Donald E. Cresitello, Hurricane Evacuation Study program manager for the State of New York, US Army resources are limited, especially for an event the size of Corps of Engineers, New York District.

Sandy. If resources are dispatched to areas that were not impacted, valuable time is lost mobilizing and reassigning

G

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USACE

Storm surge in downtown New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

surge zone, and if so, determine which designated shelter is nearby.

The Army Corps also wants the public to use these resources. “It’s important for people to know their specific zone,” says Cresitello. “The

public should be aware of what evacuation zone they live in and should listen to their local officials, such as the mayor or emergency manager, so they don’t question or ignore an official emergency evacuation order.”

He adds, “We don’t want the public deciding on their own if they should evacuate or not. If a location is in danger then they should heed the evacuation order. It doesn’t matter if it’s 6 inches or 10 feet of water.”

During Sandy, people who should have evacuated but didn’t were stranded without help and faced many dangers, including electrocution from downed power lines and fires from massive gas leaks.

Schneyer says, “The more information, especially information resulting from scientific studies and available technology, the more situationally aware we and our residents will be. This very valuable resource is an excellent tool for public education, emergency management planning, and emergency preparedness in general.”

JoAnne Castagna, Ed.D., is a public affairs specialist and writer for the US Army Corps of Engineers, New York District.

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1. Publication Title: Stormwater. 2. Publication No: 1531-0574. 3. Filing Date: October 1, 2015. 4. Issue Frequency: Bimonthly with extra issues in May and October. 5. No. of Issues Published Annually: Eight. 6. Annual Subscription Price: $76. 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: 2946 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, CA 93105.

Contact Person: Steven Wayner, 805-682-1300. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: 2946 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, CA 93105. 9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Group Editor: Publisher, Daniel Waldman, 2946 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93105; Editor, Janice Kaspersen, 2946 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93105; Group Editor: John Trotti, 2946 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93105.

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11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1% or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: None. 12. Tax Status: The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes has not changed during preceding 12 months. 13. Publication Title: Stormwater.

14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: September 2015.

15. Extent and Nature of Circulation: Average No. No. Copies of Copies Each Single Issue Issue During Published Preceding Nearest to 12 Months Filing Date a. Total No. Copies 22,617 23,040 b. Legitimate Paid/Requested Distribution: (1) Outside County Paid/Requested Mail 21,228 21,517 Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 (2) In-County Paid/Requested Mail Subscriptions stated on PS Form 3541 (3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid or Requested Distribution Outside USPS (4) Requested Copies Distributed by Other Mail Classes Through the USPS 33 47 c. Total Paid/Requested Circulation 21,261 21,564 d. Nonrequested Distribution: (1) Outside County Nonrequested Copies 933 1,068 as Stated on PS Form 3541 (2) In-County Nonrequested Copies as Stated on PS Form 3541 (3) Nonrequested Copies Distributed Through the USPS by Other Classes of Mail (4) Nonrequested Copies Distributed 294 400 Outside the Mail e. Total Nonrequested Distribution 1,227 1,468 f. Total Distribution 22,488 23,032 g. Copies Not Distributed 129 8 h. Total 22,617 23,040 i. Percent Paid/Requested Circulation 94.54% 93.63% I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete.

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In the US, continuing development increases impervious areas; therefore, an increase in stormwater management is required. The current conditions have resulted in problems from poor water quality to frequent flooding and erosion issues. Current infrastructures are over-burdened and costly to expand. As a solution for managing stormwater, Borgert Products developed and patented a permeable pavement system called FiltraPave (Patent# 737,465/737,466).

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IN-SITU INC. The Aqua TROLL 600 Multiparameter Sonde is the newest advancement in state-of-the-art water monitoring technology.

Rugged in groundwater and corrosion-resistant in surface water, it delivers accurate data in an easy-to-use, customizable instrument.

Internal data logging, 9+ month battery life, drift-resistant sensors, and active and passive antifouling systems ensure years of performance in fresh and saltwater applications. Simple telemetry setup, smartphone app control, and a quick-read LCD status screen make maintenance and deployment fast and easy. www.in-situ.com/stormwater

RAINWISE INC. The original RainWise RainLOGTM rainfall data logger set the standard for reliable, low-cost rain data gathering in a simple, easy-to-use turnkey package. The next generation RainLOGTM 2.0 with enhanced technology features USB connectivity, common 2 x AAA battery power source for a full year of continuous operation, 2 MB of Non-volatile Flash Memory for years of rainfall data storage, free comprehensive software, and a 2-year warranty. It’s also compatible with all manufacturer tipping bucket rain gauges. www.rainwise.com

stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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SHOWCASE

PINE HALL BRICK CO.

GREYLINE INSTRUMENTS INC.

St. John’s Home in Rochester, NY, is a long-term community for the elderly. To avoid runoff, the home used StormPave permeable clay pavers in the newly constructed courtyard. Stormwater can remain under the pavers as it slowly dissipates back into the soil. Water can also be used to irrigate the rain gardens in and around the courtyard.

With Greyline Instruments’ products, customers can monitor flow through open channels, partially full sewer pipes, and surcharged pipes without a flume or weir. The new MantaRay Portable AreaVelocity flowmeter is designed for monitoring stormwater, sewage, industrial effluent, irrigation water, and natural streams.

www.pinehallbrick.com

www.greyline.com/mantaray.htm

AQUA-AEROBIC

Ernst Conservation Seeds grows, processes, and sells over 400 species of native and naturalized seeds and live plant materials for restoration, beautification, reclamation, and conservation. The company identifies, collects, and propagates new species and ecotypes that meet its clients’ needs, from eastern Canada to the southeastern US.

Aqua-Aerobic Cloth Media Filtration is an economical and efficient option for the treatment of stormwater at wastewater treatment plants or remote locations. The unique OptiFiber cloth filtration media is engineered to accommodate varying flows and characteristics of stormwater and effectively removes total suspended solids without the use of chemicals. The unit has a small footprint and is mechanically designed to handle grit and scum. Additional benefits include a low-energy backwash system, easy startup, and low maintenance. The filter can also be used for tertiary treatment between rain events.

www.ernstseed.com

www.aqua-aerobic.com

ERNST SEEDS

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PLASTIC SOLUTIONS INC.

Bio-Microbics’ dRain Joint is a simple, green alternative stormwater filtered drain for hard surfaces. As an exterior, linear filter drain for impervious surfaces, the dRain Joint puts filtered rainwater in the underneath gravel detention area of the pavement, increasing the usable surface and eliminating costly stormwater drainage infrastructure.

Plastic Solutions Inc. was founded in 1997 with the vision to supply structural plastic trash racks to the stormwater management industry. Since then, a significant amount of research and development has gone into product testing—including load testing, UV resistance, flammability, resin additives, and water flow restriction requirements—all with excellent results. Today, Plastic Solutions supplies high-quality, industry-leading trash racks, and also sells HDPE pipe, HDPE fittings, ChamberMaxx pipe, PVC pipe, plastic catch and drain basins, and plastic sheet goods.

The company has certified shop and field welders to ensure all requirements are met.

www.biomicrobics.com

www.plastic-solution.com

BIO-MICROBICS INC.

SOLINST CANADA LTD.

BRENTWOOD INDUSTRIES Brentwood is extending its stormwater product line with the introduction of the StormTank Arch to provide a solution for large-footprint, subsurface stormwater management projects. The Arch offers a cost-effective means of promoting infiltration for commercial and recreational applications, in addition to maximizing developmental space. Commonly installed under parking lots, parks, and athletic fields, the Arch system is capable of storing a large volume of water while maintaining a low profile. The Arch features structural rib end panels, which are molded to provide system strength, and interlocking end corrugates to allow for overlapping and easy installation. www.brentwoodindustries.com

Solinst Canada Ltd. has now released a new version of the Solinst Levelogger App that is compatible with Android smart devices. The Solinst Levelogger App makes water level data collection and sharing, as well as programming Levelogger dataloggers in the field, convenient and efficient. With the Levelogger App Interface, Bluetooth wireless technology allows connectivity from a Levelogger to a smartphone or tablet. The Levelogger App Interface simply threads onto the end of a Levelogger's Direct Read Cable, or an Adaptor, and is paired with the smart device running the Solinst Levelogger App. The Solinst Levelogger App is available free to download on Google Play. www.solinst.com/products/dataloggersand-telemetry/3001-levelogger-series/ solinst-levelogger-app

ShowCase is based on information supplied by manufacturers. Some manufacturers did not respond to requests for information. Publication of materials received is subject to editing and availability. stormh2o.com | November/December 2015

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ADVERTISER’S INDEX COMPANY Advanced Drainage Systems . . . . .

American Hydrotech Inc. . . . . . . .

American Peat Technology LLC . . . .

AP/M Permaform . . . . . . . . . . .

Best Management Products . . . . . .

Bio Clean Environmental . . . . . . .

Borgert Products . . . . . . . . . . .

CleanWay Environmental Partners . . .

Crumpler Plastic Pipe Inc. . . . . . . .

DOGIPOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ENPAC LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Envirocert International Inc. . . . . . .

Ernst Conservation Seeds . . . . . . .

IN-SITU Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Invisible Structures Inc. . . . . . . . .

J.W. Faircloth & Son . . . . . . . . .

Modular Wetlands . . . . . . . . . . .

Oldcastle Stormwater Solutions - KriStar Pine Hall Brick Co. Inc. . . . . . . . .

Plastic Solutions Inc. . . . . . . . . .

Prinsco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

StormTrap LLC . . . . . . . . . . . .

SW FeeSaver LLC . . . . . . . . . . .

The Strong Co. Inc. . . . . . . . . . .

Triton Stormwater Solutions . . . . . .

Tymco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

U.S. Composting Council . . . . . . .

XP Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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www.ads-pipe.com . . . . . . . www.hydrotechusa.com . . . . . www.americanpeattech.com. . . www.permaform.net . . . . . . www.bmpinc.com . . . . . . . . www.biocleanenvironmental.net . www.borgertproducts.com. . . . www.cleanwayusa.com . . . . . www.cpp-pipe.com . . . . . . . www.dogipot.com . . . . . . . . www.enpacgroup.com. . . . . . www.envirocertintl.org. . . . . . www.ernstseed.com. . . . . . . www.in-situ.com . . . . . . . . www.invisiblestructures.com. . . www.fairclothskimmer.com . . . www.modularwetlands.com . . . www.oldcastlestormwater.com. . www.pinehallbrick.com . . . . . www.plastic-solution.com . . . . www.prinsco.com . . . . . . . . www.stormtrap.com. . . . . . . www.swfeesaver.com . . . . . . www.strongseal.com . . . . . . www.tritonsws.com . . . . . . . www.tymco.com . . . . . . . . www.compostingcouncil.org . . . www.xpsoftware.com . . . . . .

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November/December 2015 | stormh2o.com

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10 Simple Strategies for Achieving Environmental Compliance and Big Profits at the Same Time Jennifer Hildebrand

STRAIGHT TALK STRATEGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE

Hildebrand’s refreshing and crystal-clear approach merits serious attention and has already won support across the regulatory and construction spectrum.

“Jennifer has always had the practical, hands-on experience and communicative ability to wade through complex issues to help others arrive at a clearer understanding through her teaching and, now, in her new book, Straight Talk.”

– Mike Harding, CPESC, Geosyntec Consultants “This book is a must read for the construction site manager, the SWPPP developer, and the site inspector.”

– John McCullah, President, Salix Applied Earthcare and host of Dirt Time

Straight Talk: Strategies for Environmental Compliance

by Jennifer Hildebrand FP_StraightTalk15_1p

Order at www.ForesterNetwork.com/books

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READER PROFILE

Brad Flack

BY CAROL BRZOZOWSKI

B

rad Flack, winner of the International Erosion Control Association (IECA) 2015 Young Professional of the Year Award, has accomplished much in the decade he’s been in the industry. He catapulted from knowing nothing about stormwater mitigation to becoming a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) and a Certified Erosion, Sediment and Storm Water Inspector (CESSWI). He started his own company, Storm-Tex Services in Spring, TX, providing industrial, construction, and post-construction stormwater quality management and training services in seven US states and two sites in Alberta, Canada, with 10 employees.

Flack serves as an IECA mentor, chairman of the IECA Region 1 education committee’s stormwater management track, and president of IECA’s South Central chapter. He is also president of EnviroCert International (ECI) Region 6, a member of the ECI Certified Professional in Industrial Stormwater Management steering committee, a CESSWI review course instructor, a CPESC review course instructor-in-training, a Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) EnviroMentor, and a member of the TCEQ Houston Area Small Business Advisory Council.

Flack earned a B.A. from the University of Houston, majoring in history and Spanish with the intent to teach. He’s doing that now through customer education and industry lectures. His bilingualism gives Flack a competitive edge in a region where an increasing number of people who speak Spanish need stormwater compliance help and can’t afford high-end consulting firms.

Doing industry training “opens up my playbook, but there is enough business to go around,” notes Flack, adding that teaching benefits him by setting him up as an authority. He sees it as his responsibility to pass his knowledge on to the next generation: “If we don’t protect the environment appropriately, passing on the knowledge of how to do that in an easily digestible manner, then our kids will have to learn it from scratch.” Flack also “pays it forward” on a personal level.

Through his church, he directs Hands and Feet Honduras, a missionary program providing humanitarian and spiritual assistance to the impoverished village of La Ceiba.

What He Does Day to Day Flack’s days are spent dealing with email, ensuring company crews are lined up for the day, working with project managers on work flow, and conducting site visits.

What Led Him Into This Line of Work In 2002—the same year Flack married his childhood sweetheart Jennifer—stormwater mitigation became enforceable in the Houston area. Management at the company where he worked, which specialized in sediment and erosion control, recognized a potential revenue stream in stormwater management and asked him to learn about it. Flack was a quick study, building on his knowledge of erosion and sediment control with skills in site 58

inspections, permitting, and best management practices and then construction and industrial details. Flack started Storm-Tex Services in January 2013 as a spinoff from Atkinson Engineers, where he had been employed.

What He Likes Best About His Work Helping clients understand why their site is required to have stormwater control measures and doing so with the most efficient and cost-effective methods and materials to achieve the best results for their site is his greatest joy, says Flack. Although the products Flack uses are site specific, he says he’s found great success on industrial sites with Filtrexx’s Metaloxx metals removal log for metal load reduction in stormwater runoff.

His Biggest Challenge Flack says his greatest joy—customer education—also is his greatest challenge. “I want them to fully understand what it is they have on their site, how it works, what they need, and why. Most people don't register stormwater as an issue on their radar screen unless a regulator or someone like me brings it to their attention,” he says. He learned from a Dale Carnegie course to approach a situation from the other person’s perspective. That might mean addressing budgetary concerns with realistic expectations of what his company can do based on site conditions. He offers incentives such as longer invoicing periods or discounts if customers agree to let his company handle stormwater mitigation from that point on.

The moment when it finally “clicks” for them as they understand what they need to do to get into and stay in compliance “is worth every minute of conversation,” he notes.

Carol Brzozowski specializes in topics related to stormwater and technology.

Clarification The article “Stormwater Management in Coastal North Carolina” in our October 2015 issue referred to the Grey to Blue program.

The program is now called Heal Our Waterways. You can find more information at www.healourwaterways.org.

November/December 2015 | stormh2o.com

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Anyone who disturbs or restores the soil should read this book.

This design manual is a must-read for all landscape architects, landscape designers, horticulturalists, agronomists, hydrologists, developers, contractors, land use planners, and public works engineers, to name a few.

FP_Sustainable_15_1p

The Sustainable Site

by Rodney W. Tyler, Alexander Marks, and Dr. Britt Faucette, CPESC, LEED AP

58-60SW1511_READER.indd 59

Order today at www.ForesterNetwork.com/books.

FORESTER

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1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

DESIGN

TOOL

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