The Maryland Department of Transportation recently unveiled three “smart ponds” built via a public-private partnership or P3 stormwater control project that seeks to reduce pollutants and curb local flooding.
[Above photo by Maryland DOT]
The agency said this “smart pond” project is the first of its kind involving a state transportation department and it involved the Maryland Department of Environment, Environmental Protection Agency, Walmart, and The Nature Conservancy.
The Maryland DOT said this “smart pond” technology – developed by Opti – uses sensors and software to monitor real-time conditions such as water level and storage volume. Then, using Internet-based weather forecasts, the system remotely operate valves that control timing and volume of water discharge from the ponds as longer retention time increases water quality by capturing more sediment and nutrients.
Thus, when rain is in the forecast, the system can automatically open valves to drain the pond prior to precipitation, the agency said – helping maximize stormwater storage efficiency and reducing downstream flooding.
“These smart ponds are another innovative way we’re working to improve the communities we serve,” explained Greg Slater, Maryland DOT secretary, in a statement. “We’re being responsible stewards of the environment while at the same time helping protect the infrastructure that supports our hard-working residents and businesses.”
The Maryland Environmental Service, The Nature Conservancy, and Opti originally signed a contract in July 2020 to retrofit three stormwater runoff ponds located at Walmart stores as “smart ponds.” Concurrently, the Maryland DOT plans to spend $3.25 million to purchase 80 acres worth of Chesapeake Bay impervious area treatment credits generated by the smart ponds at Walmart. After certification of the credits, the Maryland DOT will begin purchasing the credits this spring.
The agency said this smart pond partnership represents the first time a state department of transportation is purchasing credits from a Water Quality Trading Program. Maryland’s program created a water quality marketplace for credits generated by pollutant reductions elsewhere in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed – offering “market-based” economic incentives for pollutant reductions.
The cost to Maryland DOT for these new credits is about $37,500 per acre, including installation of smart pond technology and 20 years of monitoring, inspecting, operating and maintaining the ponds by The Nature Conservancy and Opti. That is significantly less than the average construction cost of $150,000 per impervious acre treated through stormwater control devices such as swales, bio-retention cells and stormwater ponds, the agency noted – and that $150,000 cost does not include operation and maintenance. Overall, the Maryland DOT said it owns about 800 ponds that could benefit from this smart pond technology.
Two key Senate Democrats introduced a $73 billion plan on May 4 to transition the nation’s transit buses and vans to Zero Emission Vehicle or ZEV platforms.
The “Clean Transit for America” plan – introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the senate’s majority leader, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs – would replace America’s 70,000 mass transit buses and 85,000 cutaway/transit vans to “clean energy vehicles.” The plan would also prioritize funding for areas with the worst air quality first.
Currently in the United States, only 2 percent of buses are ZEVs, argued Sen. Schumer in a statement. He added that the volume of air pollutants from diesel buses disproportionally affects low-income communities and communities of color.
“To reduce the carbon in our atmosphere and address the climate crisis, we must transform our transit system,” he said. “The Clean Transit for America proposal will replace dirty, diesel-spewing buses, create new American jobs, help save the planet and protect public health, particularly in our country’s most vulnerable communities.”
“Americans deserve world-class public transportation that is delivered with modern, zero-emission buses built by American workers,” added Sen. Brown. “The Clean Transit for America Plan will create a significant number of good-paying, union jobs building zero-emission buses in the U.S. It is the kind of transformative investment we need in public transit that will put Americans to work [and] connects people with opportunity.”
In a related effort, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., recently outlined a “vision” for how the Environmental Protection Agency could adopt standards to reduce greenhouse gas or GHG emissions in the automotive industry and eliminate tailpipe pollution from new cars by 2035.
“The future of the automobile manufacturing sector is at a crossroads,” Sen. Carper – chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works – explained in a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan.
“The Clean Air Act provides sufficient authority for the EPA to rise to this challenge,” he said in a statement released with the letter. “EPA can establish requirements on new cars that would significantly reduce air pollution harming communities, put the nation on track to maintain its leadership in vehicle technology, and make significant progress in fighting climate change.”
Sen. Carper added that “if the U.S. does not establish a robust policy that leads to ZEV deployment” he warned the nation “will be at risk of losing our automotive jobs and industry leadership to other nations, as well as enduring unnecessary public health impacts from pollution.”
The National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) released a report in February 2021 highlighting several state agency efforts to incorporate Green Infrastructure (GI) solutions into transportation drainage and landscaping design.
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials helped research and publish that report – entitled Landscape Design Practices for Roadside Water Management: Domestic Scan 16-02– as part of the joint AASHTO and Federal Highway Administration’s NCHRP “Domestic Scan Program.” That program helps speed up the transfer of information and technology among transportation agencies.
This article is the first in a two-part series – focusing on the state of the practice in GI in several agencies, as well as policies in place and challenges found in the industry. The second article will focus on recommendations for the future of GI implementation state transportation agencies.
According to the FHWA, “green infrastructure” is defined as “strategically planned and managed networks of natural lands, working landscapes and other open spaces that conserve ecosystem values and functions and provide associated benefits to human populations.” It also applies to various water management approaches where transportation infrastructure is concerned, including technologies that “infiltrate, evapotranspire, capture, and reuse stormwater to maintain or restore natural hydrologies.”
[Above photo by the Virginia DOT]
The NCHRP’s new report — Landscape Design Practices for Roadside Water Management: Domestic Scan 16-02 – developed a more specific definition for GI. That definition included “roadside stormwater management, Low Impact Development or LID, hydro-modification, and watershed actions that conserve water, buffer climate change impacts, improve water quality, water supply, public heath, and restores and protects rivers, creeks and streams as a component of transportation development projects and operations.”
The team compiling the report found, however, that the practice of incorporating GI is inconsistent among state departments of transportation – employed only when required. Overall findings suggest GI is not yet a part of the state DOT stormwater management toolbox and is not routinely employed as a standard stormwater management method.
That team included:
Jennifer Taira, senior landscape architect for the California Department of Transportation and chair of AASHTO’s NCHRP committee.
Ken Graeve, erosion and stormwater management unit supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Transportation
Charles Hebson, manager of the surface water resources division for the Maine Department of Transportation
Garrett Jackson, a hydrologist with the Washington State Department of Transportation
Laura Riggs, LRSP and SRTPP program manager for the Louisiana Department of Transportation
Brian Smith, ecologist and biologist for the FHWA
Lucy Joyce, former landscape architect supervisor with the Nevada Department of Transportation
That team further investigated how leading transportation agencies are applying principles and practices of GI for roadside water management and then planned to develop recommendations to help agencies look to the future of a higher level of implementation.
A central finding of this report is that, historically, managing the “peak flow” of water off roads to nearby waterways has been the traditional focus of transportation infrastructure design via techniques such as “gray infrastructure,” which includes culverts and pipes, to move the water offsite quickly. However, the report found that approach is sometimes neither the most efficient nor cost-effective in terms of managing that water flow. Newer GI techniques – such as water harvesting, landform grading, rain gardens, micro-catchment basins in arid climates, and large-watershed – are proving to be more efficient “green solutions.”
Photo via WSDOT
On top of that, many of the GI practices in use today resulted from various regulatory requirements for clean water/clean air imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency as well as state departments of environmental protection/quality. Yet the report discovered that many of those regulatory efforts – typically at the state level – often included barriers that hindered a state DOT’s ability to fully or successfully implement the switch to more efficient and low cost GI practices.
For example, the “gray” approaches to managing stormwater runoff from roads and highway can actually contribute to the problems of flooding and stormwater pollution in some cases.
To discern what GI practices work best, the report team sent out a survey to seven state DOTs (Arizona, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington) and five cities, counties, or regional agencies (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City, New York; Long Creek Watershed Management District, Maine; Southeast Michigan Council of Governments [SEMCOG], Michigan; and King County, Washington).
Photo via Maryland DOT
In addition to the survey responses, the team met directly with several of them during a series of three-day workshops.
The survey and workshop discussions resulted in a series of key GI implementation focal points:
“Intensity of regulations really affects what gets implemented.”
“Technology matters, especially geospatial data management.”
“Training/education is important in implementing effective maintenance”
“Watershed approach is key.”
“Planning level of DOTs is important to coordinate stormwater needs and optimize opportunities.”
“Maintenance is important; we could have an entire scan on maintenance of these solutions”
“Standards, codes, policy, ordinances as important tools for driving/enabling green stormwater infrastructure”
While the survey answers and workshop discussions highlight “significant movement” toward more use of GI solutions in landscaping and storm water management, the funding, support, construction, and maintenance practice for GI remained inconsistent.
As a result, the report team outlined eight recommendations to promote GI practices among state DOTs in the future — recommendations detailed in part two of this series next week.
The Ohio Department of Transportation is joining forces with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources to conduct a statewide anti-litter campaign.
[Above image via the Ohio DOT]
The campaign – called “A Little Litter is a Big Problem” – aims to show state residents the negative impact litter has on the state’s transportation system, parks, beachfronts, and waterways.
“Litter is ugly and costly,” explained Governor Mike DeWine (R) in a statement. “One of the things we can all do is help clean up litter, because a little bit of litter is a big problem.”
He pointed to recent research that shows 42 percent of state residents admitted littering in the past month.
The Ohio DOT noted that it alone has spent at least $48.6 million to deal with litter since 2011. Last year, its staff spent 151,410 hours picking up trash, the agency said.
“Every year [our] crews have to divert their attention from important maintenance work to pick up other people’s trash,” emphasized Ohio DOT’s director Jack Marchbanks – noting that the agency spent at least $48.6 million to deal with litter since 2011 and that its staff spent 151,410 hours picking up trash in 2020 alone.
“If we can work together to reduce the amount of litter that collects on our roadways, our crews can spend less time picking up trash and more time on critical maintenance work like pothole and guardrail repairs,” he said.
State departments of transportation across the country are conducting similar anti-litter campaigns.
For example, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee (D) recently helped the Rhode Island Department of Transportation officially launch a new “Clean Rhodes” anti-litter initiative on April 22.
Gov. McKee and wife collecting trash/photo via the Rhode Island Governor’s Office
“Litter is one of the biggest sources of complaints for RIDOT and has us spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in a seemingly never-ending battle of picking up trash along our roads,” Peter Alviti, Jr., the agency’s director, said in a statement. “We’re upping our game and enlisting the help of the business and volunteer community to help us address this blight on our roads.”
RIDOT, which said it spends $800,000 annually to pick up trash on state roads, noted that the goal of this campaign is to remove 1 million pieces of litter. The agency is also seeking to buy specialized litter removal equipment that attaches to its maintenance vehicles for some $750,000 so it can rake and clean litter from strips of land and other larger green spaces along roads more easily.
Meanwhile, the Delaware Department of Transportation, for example, recently renewed focus on its “Keep DE Litter Free” campaign. To date in 2021, the agency said its crewed collected and cleared nearly 16,000 bags of trash from state roadways – adding to the more than 51,000 bags of trash collected and cleared in 2020. That includes more than 6,800 tires, 3,500 signs, and 250 appliances removed from Delaware roads, the Delaware DOT pointed out.
“Even with reduced traffic on our roads for a significant amount of time in the past year, our litter problem has persisted,” noted Nicole Majeski, Delaware DOT secretary, in a statement. “We are committed to reducing the amount of litter along our roads and I am grateful to our employees, partners, and volunteers who continue to work hard collecting litter across the state.”
Finally, the North Carolina Department of Transportation recently noted that its litter removal efforts – including the ongoing Litter Sweep annual trash removal effort – resulted in the collection and clearing of more than 4 million pounds of roadside litter so far in 2021.
NCDOT said in a statement that its ongoing litter management programs are “multifaceted,” making use of “state-owned forces and contract services.”
That includes its “Sponsor-A-Highway Program” that allows businesses, organizations and individuals to sponsor litter removal along roadsides as well as its Adopt-A-Highway Program, where volunteers pledge to clean a section of our highways at least four times a year.
Legislation recently proposed by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works would seek to “reconnect and revitalize” areas harmed by the construction of the Interstate Highway System over the past six decades.
[Above photo by the Massachusetts DOT]
Dubbed the “Reconnecting Communities Act,” Sen. Carper’s bill would establish a grant program within the U.S. Department of Transportation to help communities “identify and remove or retrofit highway infrastructure that creates obstacles to mobility and opportunity.”
In a statement, Sen. Carper said the Reconnecting Communities Act “would empower communities to reverse this unfortunate legacy by building spaces over and around our highways, revitalizing nearby areas as a result.”
His bill is also solely sponsored by Democrats including: Sen. Van Hollen; Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate’s majority leader; Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.; Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; Sen Chris Coons, D-Del.; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.; and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass.
“The development of the Interstate Highway System connected our country in ways it hadn’t been previously, but it also upended neighborhoods and left communities divided, many times over economic and racial lines. In many communities of color, nearby highways continue to represent real barriers for getting around and getting ahead,” Sen. Carper pointed out.
“In cities across the country, communities of color have disproportionately seen their homes and businesses demolished for the construction of highways that in turn separate them from their neighbors and from economic opportunity. This is just one example of how government has disrupted and divided communities through the placement of infrastructure projects,” added. Sen. Padilla. “As we work to rebuild our economy and our infrastructure, we must do so equitably,” he said. “The Reconnecting Communities Act will play an important role in making sure that we don’t return to the status quo, but that we repair the harm and injustice these communities have faced.”
This episode of the Environmental Technical Assistance Program or ETAP podcast focuses on the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s “Rethinking I-94 project.” The agency started that program in 2016 with the intent of reconnecting neighborhoods and revitalizing communities sundered by the original construction of Interstate 94 back in the 1960s. The program also seeks to ensure residents “have a meaningful voice” in transportation decisions that affect their lives today and into the future.
[Above photo of I-94 construction by the Minnesota DOT]
Margaret Anderson Kelliher – commissioner of the Minnesota DOT – and Gloria Jeff, director of the Rethinking I-94 project for the agency, discuss the long-term effort to improve the department’s engagement and relationships with communities along I-94 between the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
“Environmental justice brings forward attention to the disproportionate outcomes for low-income and communities of color in the case of transportation,” said Kelliher. “It includes the burdens those communities have to face in terms of air and noise pollution from transportation. It is also a little broader in terms of race, geographies, and income disparities.”
That then draw in transportation equity, whereby the need for transportation systems need to “level up” and provide better mobility options to low-income and communities of color.
For example, Kelliher noted that a recent study found that a person living in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region who does not have access to a car or public transit has access to less than 10 percent of the jobs in that region. “That’s a major example of a transportation equity issue,” she said.
Minnesota DOT’s Jeff went on to explain that “transportation equity” issues is not a “quality,” not the idea that everybody gets “everything in the same way.”
It isn’t, “do I have a transit route operate near my home,” said Jeff but rather, “does it operate at the time that I need.” Jeff added that transportation equity is more than race and ethnic background, but that “this is where the current challenges exist” and why the current equity focus is on those two areas. To listen to the full podcast, click here.
The governors of 12 states – California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington – recently signed a joint letter urging the Biden Administration to establish national zero emission vehicle standards. They also urged the administration to leverage the proposed $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan to provide more fiscal support for ZEV infrastructure construction.
[Above photo via the Massachusetts Governor’s Office.]
The April 21 letter calls on the administration to require all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks sold to be zero-emission by 2035, with all new medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles sold to be zero-emission by 2045.
“By establishing a clear regulatory path to ensuring that all vehicles sold in the United States are zero-emission, we can finally clear the air and create high-road jobs,” the governors said in the letter.
“Moving quickly towards a zero-emission transportation future will protect the health of all communities,” they added. “With bold federal leadership, American workers will lead the way in designing, building and driving clean and affordable vehicles.”
The governors highlighted how investments proposed within the administration’s American Jobs Plan investments could support the “scaling up” of ZEV charging and refueling infrastructure – enhancing the investments already made by states.
For example, the California Department of Transportation in February installed 22 new “fast-charging” stations for electric vehicles or EVs at nine locations along the state’s highway network.
Six energy utility companies announced in March that they are joining forces to build a seamless network of EV charging stations connecting major highway systems from the Atlantic Coast, through the Midwest and South, and into the Gulf and Central Plains regions.
Meanwhile, the governors also requested in their letter an expansion of tax credits to support the manufacturing of zero-emissions trucks, buses, and charging stations and funding to promote equitable access to ZEVs and transportation electrification at the local level.
One example of that is the deployment by the Cherokee Nation of two electric transit buses to transport employees and tribal citizens to work and tribal health centers, along with an electric school bus.
The tribe said it used a $1.5 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant awarded in 2018 to help pay for those buses as well as construction of the recharging station.
“The Cherokee Nation has always been a leader in environmental conservation and forward-thinking efforts that will reduce harmful activities impacting our natural resources,” said Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. in a statement. “As we work to reduce our carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2027, we are investing in sustainable projects that will have many long-term benefits,” he added. “Our responsibility as stewards of the land, air, and water will always be one of our most significant values, and introducing these eco-friendly transit vehicles into our fleet is an example of how we can make a great difference in our environment.”
