Within “water rich” Storm Lake, the City’s industrial park has been witnessing frequent and severe flooding. The automatic response of simply providing more drainage was given pause. Instead, a resilient solution was derived in order to reduce flooding, while also providing additional stacked functions. The design is based on a green infrastructure backbone, which achieves superior flood reduction while matching and reducing runoff rates. In addition, over 3.50 acre-feet of storage is proposed for water quality treatment.
This green infrastructure design includes stormwater wetlands, biofiltration basins, grassed waterways and vegetated swales, all of which are centered around the concept of using a 2-stage agricultural ditch that allows higher flows to be captured & treated in floodplain BMPs.
