Wednesday, February 19, 2025

UNCW repaves lot with permeable material to mitigate polluted runoff

The local university is handling a repaving project with water quality in mind. (Courtesy photo)

WILMINGTON — The local university is handling a repaving project with water quality in mind.

ALSO: ‘Most degraded watershed in the county’ to be restored with green infrastructure

UNCW is replacing several sections of conventional asphalt in UNCW’s Randall parking lot with permeable pavement that soaks in the rain. The material will help with water runoff improvement into Bradley and Hewletts Creek Watersheds that flow between the City of Wilmington and Town of Wrightsville Beach.  

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, UNCW, and the City of Wilmington Heal Our Waterways Program are working with Coastal Stormwater Services Inc. and DiMaio Concrete have partnered to install it.

The project is one of many implemented as part of a 2007 local Watershed Restoration Plan. For example, the university has implemented half a dozen rain gardens to capture millions of gallons of polluted runoff, which have affected both the Hewletts Creek and Bradley Creek watersheds.

“We are pleased to have this parking lot help reduce runoff and be able to showcase these techniques along with our campus rain gardens as a living classroom,” Feletia Lee, UNCW’s chief sustainability officer, said in a press release.

This stormwater retrofit project was supported by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources’ EPA Section 319 Water Quality Program.


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Shea Carver
Shea Carver
Shea Carver is the editor in chief at Port City Daily. A UNCW alumna, Shea worked in the print media business in Wilmington for 22 years before joining the PCD team in October 2020. She specializes in arts coverage — music, film, literature, theatre — the dining scene, and can often be tapped on where to go, what to do and who to see in Wilmington. When she isn’t hanging with her pup, Shadow Wolf, tending the garden or spinning vinyl, she’s attending concerts and live theater.

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