JCMUA FUNDS SUSTAINABLE JC GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT
Local community organization Sustainable Jersey City (SJC), a collaborative network of green civic minded orgs and individuals, has teamed up with the NJ Tree Foundation to install a rain garden at NJCU Campus as an intervention strategy for building flooding. The project is being funded by the JC Municipal Utilities Authority in support of community led initiatives of green infrastructure design install projects. The rain garden was installed last September 2017.
After an extensive assessment of ongoing flooding issues at the Fine Arts Building, the Earth & Environmental Science Department Faculty and Students created a set of benchmarked data that included soil composition and the directional analysis of both underground tidal activity from the Hackensack River, that seems to seep into the property, and above ground stormwater activity as it flows over the landscape during rain events. The purpose of this analysis was to verify if the rain garden intervention strategy would make an impact. As it turns out, the intervention strategy was successful!
”“We were very pleased to have teamed up again with the NJ Tree Foundation, who is our partner for the rain garden installations we seek out. They are a highly competent crew who helped us assess the best design for the landscape and they work really hard to excavate the site and install a beautiful and functional rain garden with native plants, that are both drought and water tolerant,” says SJC Founder Debra Italiano.
”She adds, “The main goals of this initiative were to remedy a flooding challenge for the Fine Arts Building and to demonstrate the efficacy of rain gardens as a green infrastructure option to help to manage stormwater issues. We involved students at each stage of the process and they are now part of the monitoring protocol set up to collect data on the positive impact this rain garden has had on campus.”
Sustainable JC is working with NJCU to concentrate a cluster group of green infrastructure projects on campus, including initiating a collaboration with Bartlett Tree Experts who are performing a tree inventory for the campus. Sustainable JC will take that tree inventory data and upload it into the JC OpenTreeMap tool to calculate the monetized eco system benefits provided by the trees, including energy saved, stormwater filtered, air quality improved, carbon dioxide removed and carbon dioxide stored to date. That project is set for completion in the Spring of 2018.
