Project Overview
Since 2016, the City of Madison has been experiencing larger storms and urban flash flooding, especially during the August 2018 storm. In response to these events, the Madison Common Council has authorized the city's Engineering Division to develop accurate watershed models in order to identify areas of concern. Additionally, the city wants to minimize the amount of stormwater runoff that the current infrastructure needs to handle by implementing Green Infrastructure (GI) practices. The main questions of the study are as follows:
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How much effective impervious cover (sidewalk, pavement, driveways, roofs etc.) needs to be converted to pervious cover (allows stormwater to soak into the ground) before a reduction in volume can be measured in downstream pipes?
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Can a waterbody impaired by urban land use (current neighborhoods) ever be able to revert to pre-settlement conditions (oak-savannah) through implementation of GI alone?
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What temporal scale should municipal officials expect when developing plans for watershed and ecosystem restoration?
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Are flood models that include large amounts of GI accurate or misleading towards long-term watershed health?
Westmorland Park
2020 Street Reconstruction Project
The 2020 Street Reconstruction Project associated with the GI study started in June of 2020 and was completed right before winter also in 2020. This included the reconstruction of pavement, curb and gutter, and other existing surface infrastructure on Holly Avenue, Euclid Avenue, Toepfer Avenue, and St Clair Street. Along with general updates, different GI practices were installed all throughout these areas. Both Euclid Avenue and St Clair Street received a parking lane full of pervious pavers hoping to reduce the amount of runoff just from the street. The City of Madison worked with property owners to see what types of GI they may want to have on or near their property which can be seen by the blue and green shaded lots across the map to the right. These areas represent the properties that would have stormwater terraces and rock cribs installed (respectively) adding to the complexity of GI used in this study. The Engineering Division is also working with property owner about installing their own private GI practice, such as rain barrels or rain gardens.
