Urban Stormwater Reduction Services
The Wabash River Enhancement Corporation (WREC) is a non-profit organization that raises money to invest in “opportunities to improve health, recreation, education, economic development, and environmental management” along the 31 miles of the river corridor in Tippecanoe County. Through strong relationships with the City of Lafayette, the City of West Lafayette, Purdue University and Tippecanoe County, WREC leads and engages with the community in the implementation of projects that improve environmental quality and economic development.
Urban stormwater management and agricultural best management practices are typically evaluated by the same standard processes that estimate load reductions of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and total suspended solids (TSS) discharged to the river. However, urban green infrastructure has a significantly greater impact on the sustainability of the Wabash River corridor than is measured by load reductions alone. For this project, students will analyze the value of and determine how to better communicate the social, economic and environmental value of urban green infrastructure.
UPDATE
The Wabash River Enhancement Corporation (WREC) runs the website
TippEcoNow.com. The TippEcoNow website is intended as a resource for homeowners
on the many best management practices (BMPs) being used within the Wabash River
watershed and provides information and guidelines on implementing them. TippEcoNow
lacks information on the importance and impacts of these practices, thus this project aims
to develop an information bank on the social, economic, and environmental benefits that
can later be used for a variety of different educational material. This project also intends
to create three visuals to help the public conceptualize the impact of these BMPs.