
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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