William Hunt III

Lifetime Fitness (LTF) is developing an existing driving range in Northeast Raleigh into a Personal Fitness Center. To complete a project conducted prior to construction, LTF has pledged to monitor their center and property which has been designed to mimic pre-development hydrology and pollutant loads. NCSU-BAE proposes to collect hydrologic and water quality data from the completed development immediately before flow exits the property (at a monitoring station constructed during phase I of this project). Data collected during this second phase will be compared to that of the earlier (pre-development) monitoring period. NCSU faculty and staff will participate in up to 4 public meetings to discuss the project as part of public service/outreach, if needed.

This project seeks to implement low impact development features on a new hotel development and monitor the impacts of the hotel’s construction on the receiving tributary that flows into the impaired Black Creek that is located in the Neuse River Basin. The hotel site will be constructed so post-development discharges will be within 10% of pre-development discharges into the tributary. While watershed restoration in the form of stormwater retrofit projects has taken place in the Black Creek watershed for 10+ years, continued development and associated runoff continues to chip away at the gains made. This high profile project with a world-renown corporate hotel chain has the potential to inform and inspire more sustainable stormwater management on highly impervious commercial sites.

The Third Fork Creek watershed is located in an older and heavily urbanized part of Durham, NC. It is impaired for Copper, Benthos, Turbidity, and TSS. Additionally, Third Fork Creek flows into B. Everett Jordan Reservoir (Jordan Lake), which has TMDLs for Total Phosphorus and Total Nitrogen, as well as a TMDL Addendum for High pH and Turbidity impairments associated with the State chlorophyll-a standard in Jordan Lake. Major stream restoration and watershed management projects undertaken by various organizations have already realized great improvements. Much of the watershed’s urban stormwater runoff, however, remains untreated prior to entering Third Fork Creek. This proposed project will uplift three existing SCMs (Dry Detention Basins) in the watershed and convert them into new SCMs (Constructed Stormwater Wetlands) that better address the water quality needs of Jordan Lake and Third Fork Creek. Dry detention basins (DDB’s) offer minimal water quality benefits compared to constructed stormwater wetlands (CSW’s); the latter can maintain similar temporary volume storage while greatly improving treatment of TSS, phosphorus, and nitrogen. The proposed retrofits are expected to be relatively inexpensive.

Monitoring results from traditionally designed multi-cell stormwater wetlands and flow-through wastewater treatment wetlands suggest designing stormwater wetlands as flow-through rather than capture and release systems would provide cost savings and increase the implementation of stormwater wetlands for treatment (Hathaway and Hunt 2010; Merriman et al. 2016; Drake et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2006). The purpose of this project is to determine the water quality and hydrologic benefits of flow-through wetlands. More specifically, this project will address NC DEQ concerns regarding appropriate hydraulic retention times, vegetation selection, and pollutant removal credits. Addressing these concerns will determine if stormwater wetlands can be more cost effective than equivalent SCMs (e.g. wet ponds). To the project stakeholders' knowledge single cell stormwater wetlands designed for a hydraulic retention time rather than a design volume have yet to be constructed or monitored in North Carolina.

NC State Stormwater Engineering Group faculty and students will monitoring a to-be-built off-line constructed wetland, also known as the Park/Mercer wetland. The wetland will be constructed in an open area alongside an unnamed tributary to Hominy Creek. It drains much of downtown Wilson. The current field on site (up to approximately 4 acres) will be constructed as a shallow flow-through wetland. Water will be pumped from the unnamed tributary during storm events. The design will include earthwork, wetland planting, and outlet structure/s in addition to pumping infrastructure. The Land and Water Trust grant will specifically cover expenses associated with monitoring. A second grant (to the NC DEQ's 319 nonpoint source unit) will be submitted this spring to cover construction of the wetland proper.

The state of North Carolina has been struck by several extreme rainfall events over the past few years, which have caused failures in stormwater infrastructure (including but not limited to Stormwater Control Measures (SCMs) regulated under the Department’s NPDES stormwater permits (NCS000250)). While SCMs are designed to treat runoff, their principal focus has been treating moderately sized rain storms. How these SCMs fared during larger events, and the restorative maintenance efforts associated with SCM damage is a significant concern for NCDOT. The Department has a substantial investment in stormwater management assets with over 1900 SCMs having been constructed to treat runoff from roadways, bridges, rest areas, and maintenance yards across the state. Moreover downstream stormwater infrastructure is protected by SCMs (e.g., swales and other conveyance channels). Fortunately, NCDOT has conducted quantitative monitoring of several of these SCMs installed as part of its NPDES permit-required Retrofit Program. NCDOT would benefit understanding at what storm size do typically-designed SCMs no longer provided hydrologic mitigation. At what point do SCMs likely fail with significant structural degradation (both to the SCM and downstream) that would lead to costly reconstructive repair? Moreover, are there simple retrofits to existing SCMs (or design features for to-be-built SCMs) that can enhance or extend hydrologic mitigation and reduce the chances of failure?

The modern availability of novel data analytics and cost-effective high-performance computing creates unique opportunities to tap into the wellspring of potential offered by big data for creating decision-making tools that inform sustainable agroecosystem management. When coupled with climate, land use, and policy-related data streams through analytics, long-term monitoring data can be applied to develop data-driven decision-support tools designed for land and water resource managers, but foundational research is needed to develop such data-rich decision-support platforms. As a case study, this research will develop a data-to-decision pipeline for nearshore water quality management in support of shellfish agroecosystem protection. Shellfish growing areas are regularly screened for coliform bacteria to inform on-the-fly decision-making by regulators who are evaluating the sanitation of cultured shellfish, which has led to the accrual of a vast record of spatiotemporal bacterial observations. These national-scale data remain poorly explored and underutilized due to challenges associated with analyzing big, multi-scale data, but could be mined to develop critically-needed decision-support platforms.

Greenfield Lake is a 250-acre lake and public park in the heart of Wilmington, NC. The lake hosts an abundance of wildlife as well as thousands of residents and tourists who enjoy the lake’s recreational amenities. However, the surrounding development produces stormwater runoff carrying excessive nutrients, causing dangerous algal blooms, fish kills, and overall poor water quality conditions in the lake. This project aims to reduce the amount of nutrients entering Greenfield Lake by implementing low-impact-development stormwater control measures at the new site of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. The site, which will house the Food Bank as well as the local food nonprofit, Feast Down East is located along Squash Branch, a northern tributary of Greenfield Lake. By replacing a traditional wet pond with a rainwater harvesting system and infiltration basin, less stormwater runoff will flow to the lake, reducing the overall nutrient load and decreasing the negative impacts. Additionally, the rainwater captured will be used to irrigate crops grown by Feast Down East’s community learning farm, increasing access to both fresh food and environmental education opportunities to the surrounding, underserved community.

Wilson’s Hominy Creek Swamp is a Nutrient Sensitive Water (NSW) with benthos impairment. NC State University and the City of Wilson are partnering to implement a large-scale stormwater wetland that would treat runoff from most of downtown Wilson. Runoff from approximately 80-acre watershed will be treated by this off-line, flow-through wetland. As this urban SCM is large (3 acres), the funding request is separated into three proposals: (1) herein which requests funds for construction and a small amount of personnel time for construction supervision, (2) an EEG administered by the NCDOJ is providing funds for the design of the wetland, and (3) funds from the NCL&WF have recently been requested to cover all monitoring expenses. This wetland is expected to be highly effective at reducing N&P inputs to Hominy Swamp Creek, with SNAP outputs suggesting that nearly 17,000 lbs of N and more than 3000 lbs of P will be removed over a 30-year period. Because of the expected success of the project and the fact that many communities are looking for means to reduce runoff (to protect downstream underserved communities) while improving water quality, we plan to offer a flow-through wetland design workshop series in NC (including in Wilson) towards the end of this project. This workshop will disseminate information that will hopefully encourage other communities to follow a similar path. Lastly, due to the size of the ecosystem that is being created near downtown Wilson, the City will be partnering with the local science museum (Imagination Station) to develop educational displays.

Wilson’s Hominy Creek/ Hominy Swamp is a Nutrient Sensitive Water (NSW) with benthos impairment. NC State University and the City of Wilson are partnering to implement five storm water control measure (SCM) retrofits within the City Limits. The retrofits are varied and demonstrate a variety of improvements that can be made across the watershed going forward. They are: (1) the engineering of a headwaters basin to convert it into a functioning stormwater wetland, (2) the improvement of an eroding headwaters channel by either bank stabilizing or linear wetland channel creation, (3) retrofitting an existing wet pond with floating wetland islands, and (4) and (5) converting 2 alleyways into green alleys. In all, more than 130 watershed acres will be treated. In addition to the construction of these 5 retrofits, NC State and the City of Wilson will partner on multiple education programs. The first is a local wetland plant installation and maintenance workshop that will target local landscapers and City of Wilson maintenance staff. The second is a workshop that will be targeted at stormwater design and regulatory professionals highlighting specific retrofits constructed as part of this 319 grant. While the workshop series will be constructed state-wide, one of the offerings will be in the City of Wilson and will highlight these projects as part of a field tour. The City is able to provide a profound amount of match through two separate efforts. The first is the construction of a major ($1.9M) underground detention stormwater retrofit SCM in downtown and the second is applying $80,000 of a $150,000 EEG grant received for SCM design. Thus, the majority of the money requested in this grant is going towards installation (rather than being shared with a substantial amount of design costs). The City will also perform at least some of the construction for three of the SCMs to be constructed: the headwaters basin and both green alleys. A pair of watershed monitoring stations will be maintained and collected data analyzed by NC State. One monitoring station will focus on downtown Wilson runoff (and its consequent treatment); the second will focus on collective headwaters improvement. The two downtown green alley retrofits will be specifically monitored for hydrologic performance. The wet pond retrofit with floating wetland islands will be monitored for water quality improvement. Benthic macroinvertebrate testing will also be conducted at both watershed monitoring stations.