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.

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.

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.

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.

A subsurface gravel wetland will be constructed in Raleigh, NC by the City of Raleigh. North Carolina State University (NCSU) will monitor the gravel wetland for one year, analyze the data, and synthesize the results in a final report to the City of Raleigh. If the project is successful, these water quality and hydrology data will be used to help the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality establish nutrient concentrations for subsurface gravel wetlands.

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?

This project (????????????????Field Monitoring of Oldcastle BioPod BioFilters and PerkFilter Cartridge Filter???????????????) aims to explore the water quality performance of two proprietary stormwater control products in North Carolina. As management of exported nutrient pollution via stormwater runoff continues to be regulated in nutrient sensitive watersheds in North Carolina, there is a growing need for stormwater control measures, products, and devices with the capability to curtail nutrient loads from stormwater runoff. This project will test the treatment capabilities of both the BioPod and PerkFilter by Oldcastle Infrastructure as they treat stormwater runoff. BioPods are tree box filters that provide highly localized stormwater treatment in densely populated and highly urban areas. The PerkFilter is a cartridge filtration system used to remove pollutants from stormwater runoff as it flows through the system. For this research, two BioPods and two PerkFilters will be installed in central North Carolina. The four devices will treat stormwater runoff from watersheds consisting of parking lot and rooftop runoff. NCSU BAE will monitor hydrology and water quality of the four systems to evaluate overall sediment, nitrogen, phosphorus, and metals removal capabilities over the monitoring period.

The City of Asheville is constructing two wetlands in the River Arts District that will be monitored by NC State University. One of the wetlands will be retrofitted with a special media to determine if pollutant removal by wetlands can be enhanced. This project will occur for two years.

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.