Thursday, March 28, 2024

EPA announces winners of Campus RainWorks Challenge

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced the winners of its Campus RainWorks Challenge, highlighting the efforts of university and college student teams to design green infrastructure solutions to address stormwater pollution.

“Our Campus RainWorks Challenge winners inspire the next generation of green infrastructure designers and planners,” EPA Office of Water Deputy Assistant Administrator Joel Beauvais said. “All the submissions included innovative approaches to stormwater management. I want to congratulate the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Maryland for their winning submissions.”


The team from the University of Texas at Arlington won first place in the Master Plan category, which covers green infrastructure that addresses a broad area on the school’s campus. Their design would use green infrastructure along Trading House Creek, which flows through the campus, including measures such as increased biodiversity, improved soil quality and watershed hydrology and photovoltaic cells. These measures could reduce runoff by 25 inches each year and would increase tree coverage on campus by 89 percent.

The Demonstration Project category, which covers site-specific designs, is led by the University of Maryland, which came up with a design to improve stormwater management in a five-acre parking lot by adding 17,000 square feet of new vegetation, including 56 new trees, and reducing its impervious surface 40 percent.