Green Seed Fund Project

The explosive enrollment growth at the University of Washington Bothell (UWB)/Cascadia College (CC) joint campus has been manifested in an aggressive building plan resulting in ever more impervious surfaces, and an ongoing reduction of the surrounding forested area. This, in turn, is increasing the flow and reducing the quality of stormwater discharged to the adjacent campus owned wetland and North Creek.

The UWB/CC joint campus features one of the state’s largest wetland restoration areas, which contains the final reach of North Creek before it discharges into the Sammamish River. Since its inception in 1998, the 58-acre restored floodplain and creek channel has reduced flood discharges downstream and provided other ecosystem services, such as improving water quality and providing habitat for a diversity of native plants and animals. The wetland also serves as a living laboratory for students and faculty. Moreover, the successful stewardship of this wetland and fluvial ecosystem exemplifies UWB’s commitment to environmental sustainability.

This project serves to preserve this wetland ecosystem, North Creek and downstream waters by: (1) instituting a new methodology to monitor and evaluate the impact of campus landscape changes on stormwater flow volumes and quality; (2) assess the impacts of the stormwater discharges on the functionality of the wetland and what is discharged to North Creek; and (3) recommend best management practices and design improvements for the campus stormwater system and surface water features in the wetland.

A thorough assessment is required to characterize the current and potential impacts of the stormwater to enhance our management plan. This project proposes to address this need via a multi-faceted approach. A research team, consisting of faculty, staff, and students, will work to:
1. Monitor discharges and the quality of stormwater flowing from the campus into the UWB/CC wetland.
2. Determine the capacity and functionality of the bioswales and other catchment basins that receive the stormwater.
3. Assess the impacts of our stormwater runoff flows on fluxes of nutrients and fecal coliform bacteria to North Creek.
4. Develop Low Impact Designs (LID) to reduce the velocity/volume of flow in addition to improving water quality of this runoff through bioremediation.
5. Utilize the UWB Geodatabase as the repository for data and analysis.
6. Create an estimate of the change in value of ecosystem services provided by the wetland.

This work, initiated over a one-year period and maintained long-term, will enable us to make informed campus sustainability decisions relevant to the impact of stormwater on human health, environmental quality, and our compliance with environmental standards. In addition, the project will engage many UWB undergraduate students directly in environmental sustainability research, using the campus as a living, learning lab in a collaborative process with our faculty and facilities staff.