UNH students win at National Low Impact Development Competition
Innovative porous asphalt design installed on campus

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DURHAM, N.H. – Using a creative approach to reduce stormwater runoff, a UNH team took 5th place in a field of 23 competing at the first National Low Impact Development (LID) Student Design Competition held in College Park, Md. Sept 21-23.

The members of the UNH team, all civil engineering graduate students, were Pedro Avellaneda-Lopez, Joshua Briggs, and Robert Wildey. “I’m very proud of them. They worked very hard,” said Associate Professor of civil engineering Tom Ballestero, the students’ faculty advisor. “It shows that they are synthesizing everything they are learning here.”

The competition, sponsored by Prince George’s County through a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, asked students to use LID techniques to reduce runoff from roofs, parking lots and roads. This runoff carries a mix of pollutants like oil, salt and dirt into rivers and streams.

The UNH students’ entry was an innovative parking lot they helped design for UNH’s Center for Stormwater Technology Evaluation and Verification (CSTEV), directed by Rob Roseen, who also advised the students. Recently installed on the UNH campus, the lot is made of porous asphalt, which is created by leaving fine sand out of the asphalt mix. The result looks like normal pavement, but it has tiny holes that allow rainwater to flow through the parking lot, rather than off it. CSTEV will monitor the test lot to see how well it reduces runoff compared to other technologies it is testing, as well as how it holds up to the freezing and thawing of New Hampshire winters.

The UNH students’ posters may not have been as polished as some of their competition, but the judges were impressed with their approach. “Most of the other teams were from landscape architecture programs. They all had slick presentations with renderings of what their designs would look like,” said Briggs. “But we had actual construction drawings. The judges said that they could tell we had thought a lot more about the feasibility of our project than the other people had.”

A major advantage of porous asphalt over other LID tools, such as retention ponds, is that it does not require additional land, giving it the potential to cut development costs while improving water quality. It also allows rainwater to filter back into the ground, recharging aquifers. A drawback is that for optimal performance, it must be cleaned periodically to prevent the holes from becoming blocked. But Briggs said this might become less of a problem as communities are already beginning to acquire cleaning equipment to reduce the amount of pollution that flows off conventional pavement.

Along with their 5th place ranking, the UNH students received $2,900 plus another $2,400 for their program, which will use the money to send them to a stormwater conference in Orlando next July.

The Center for Stormwater Technology Evaluation and Verification (CSTEV) is an independent field facility that provides a controlled setting for testing stormwater devices in parallel. CSTEV is funded by the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET).

PHOTO CAPTIONS

Winning Team: Pedro Avellaneda-Lopez, Joshua Briggs, and Robert Wildey and CSTEV Director Robert Roseen after winning fifth place at the National Low Impact Development (LID) Student Design Competition in College Park, Md.

Roll Out: A worker smoothes out the innovative asphalt at UNH's West Edge parking lot.

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