Aiken residents to get look at green infrastructure project during field day

Published: June 21, 2012

AIKEN — Residents of Aiken and its environs will get an inside look this month at the Sand River Headwaters Green Infrastructure Project that has been renovating streets, parking lots, greenways and other public facilities since 2010. 

The Aiken Green Infrastructure Educational Field Day will be at the municipal auditorium in Aiken City Hall beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday, June 27, with scientists and engineers explaining the techniques being used to construct natural treatment systems to reduce stormwater runoff in the city. 

“Green infrastructure is a treatment approach that cities can use to provide multiple environmental benefits and support sustainable communities,” said Gene Eidson, director of the Clemson University Institute of Applied Ecology and principal investigator for the project. 

“Until recently, standard site development practices included moving untreated stormwater runoff into an underground piped-drainage network. This increased the intensity and volume of peak discharges and affected downstream water quality,” Eidson said. “Green infrastructure completely rethinks that approach by using vegetation and soil to manage rainwater where it falls.”

The field day, open to the public at no charge, takes place following a technical workshop to teach the techniques to engineers, landscape architects and government officials.

Eidson will provide an overview of the project. Specific facets of the program will be described by Clemson professors Jason Hallstrom, Dan Hitchcock, Chris Post and Brad Putman.

The events are sponsored by the City of Aiken and Clemson’s Extension Service and Center for Watershed Excellence.

“The Green Infrastructure Project is aimed at cleaning up the Sand River and its tributaries, which have persistent impairments for sediment and bacteria,” said Cal Sawyer, associate director of the Clemson University Center for Watershed Excellence. “But we're developing the research and technology in Aiken to help address water-quality concerns shared by the entire state. Aiken is a model for the infrastructure that can be used in other cities.”

The ongoing project already has rebuilt more than a dozen medians in downtown Aiken to enable them to capture and treat stormwater, Sawyer said. It has created rain gardens and bioswales to collect runoff and allow the water to infiltrate through a special bioretention soil mix, reducing pollutants and the amount of water leaving the downtown area and recharging the groundwater supply.

The project also installed pervious surfaces — which water passes through — on some downtown streets and parking lots to absorb larger amounts of rainfall. 

Infrastructure improvements were completed under a $3.3 million federal grant through the state Department of Health and Environmental Control; research for the project was funded separately by the city of Aiken.

The project won the S.C. Municipal Association’s 2011 Municipal Achievement Award and was selected by the Sustainable Sites Initiative to help test the nation’s first rating system for green landscape design, construction and maintenance.

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