Getting your hands dirty: A hands on approach to engaging community members in green infrastructure solutions for urban stormwater management

In one of the worst persistent-poverty counties in the US, a local college, a non-profit, and Title 1 public schools are coming together to educate community members on stormwater management by implementing and monitoring an innovative living shoreline approach to reduce turbidity in a tributary of the Hudson River Estuary. Van Cortlandt Lake, an urban lake located in the Bronx, NY, has experienced high levels of eutrophication due to nutrient and turbidity inputs from increased stormwater runoff, especially during wet weather events. Green infrastructure solutions are being explored to improve water quality in the lake to increase public access and recreation. This project will involve community members, local students, and college volunteers to re-align the stormwater outfall channel with woodchip reactors and increase hydraulic retention times, while removing invasive species and replacing them with native plants to create a thriving freshwater ecosystem in the Bronx. Participating community volunteers will have the opportunity to think critically about water quality issues and take specific actions to improve water quality in their local watershed by “getting their hands dirty” and building the living shoreline stormwater treatments. This will be the first project of its kind in the Bronx. Other local nonprofit organizations are exploring green infrastructure approaches to reducing impacts of stormwater outfalls throughout the Bronx. They can take the lessons learned from this project to implement living shorelines for treating stormwater and restoring habitats, while engaging their community members to become stewards of their watershed.