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Class aims to reduce pollution at creek

Written by Sarah Lutz

Tuesday, 25 November 2008 08:50 PM

Garbage collects on the bed of Trading House Creek south of Greek Row Drive. Professor David Hopman and his landscape architecture class plan to revitalize the area to help reduce pollution. (The Shorthorn: Michael Rettig)

David Hopman looks at the creek running through campus and sees polluted water running through a ditch but he believes with some work, his class could change it into an ecological oasis.

“The campus right now is not an ecological campus,” the architecture professor said. “There’s almost no expression of local ecology … there are a few remnants of post oak trees, actually the trees on campus are probably the best part of the campus ecologically.”

Instead of following the traditional methods of urban development, Hopman wants to use Low Impact Development (LID), which manages flooding storm water, on the university’s Trading House Creek.

Texas A&M Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department assistant professor Fouad Jaber said LID reduces the negative effects of traditional urban development by decreasing infiltration and increasing surface runoff. Faster excess water runoff can cause flooding and erosion.

“Low impact development practices aim at reversing that effect by increasing infiltration, holding water on-site and retaining pollutants,” Jaber said. “[LID practices] retain water on-site and allow for a soil-plant ecosystem to hold and sometimes breakdown pollutants, thus reducing the negative effects of traditional development.”

Hopman said many LID practices are being considered like depressions in the earth, which will hold water running off a sidewalk or building — instead of the current system of using a berm, a mound of soil that guides the water from a sidewalk to the drains. Hopman describes the LID practice as going from “gray to green” and the old system as “gray to gray.”

“What we’re trying to do is go from gray, off the hard surface, onto something green that will clean it, slow it down, take some of the hydrocarbons and take some of the nitrogen out,” he said.

Hopman said that most of the water on campus flows from parking lots and sidewalks directly into the drain or from green spaces to the harmful areas then a drain.

He and his students understand the creek may not be returned to a pristine ecological condition, but at least to a pre-development condition. They are also considering how it can be captured, used and expressed.

“And in conjunction with that, we’re looking at how might the stream be designed to provide habitat for what kind of critters might go well here,” he said. “This is kind of like a little ecological pocket.”

He said the areas could be a site for an environmental studies building in the future.

“If they were going to have an environmental studies department on campus then it might make sense to have it somewhere where you have potential for an ecological-looking area where students can study critters,” he said.

Jared Sylor, landscape architecture graduate student, said the class will present the ideas to the President’s Sustainability Committee next month.

“Whether or not it gets built all depends on what they think of our design,” he said. “If they like our design, if we’re able to convince them that our solutions are best for the campus and downstream of the campus.”

Correction

Wednesday’s photo caption, “Class aims to reduce pollution at creek,” misidentified the Trading House Creek.

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Last Updated ( Thursday, 15 January 2009 03:16 PM )

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