Taking the Spooky Out of Stormwater
Root-Pike WIN is Bringing Innovation to Stormwater Ponds with Help from the
Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, Fund for Lake Michigan, and Microsoft.
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Since it’s Halloween, let’s make a candy analogy to define our newest water quality project. You may remember that enchanted moment when the peanut butter fell into the chocolate. The outcome was delicious and changed candy-making forever.
In Racine County along Meachem Road and East of Sanders Park, we’re going to do the same thing by joining a stormwater treatment pond and wetland mitigation bank. With the help of our engineering partner KCI Technologies, we’re redesigning the Meachem Road stormwater pond to integrate it into a high-performing wetland mitigation bank. It’s not a trick – just a better treat-ment.
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The Meachem Road stormwater pond sits between Sanders Park to the West and the Meachem Preserve to the East. | | |
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No fault to the designers at the time, the existing Meachem Road stormwater pond now represents the
status-quo strategy for stormwater ponds. Hundreds of these ponds dot the Root-Pike basin landscape. Over the last half-century or so, stormwater ponds were (and still are) designed to reduce sediment loading and manage peak flow during storm events. That’s good. Unfortunately, there are no requirements for reducing nutrients (e.g., phosphorus and nitrogen), bacteria – and overflows from
+2-year storms. For fish, flooding, and fun on our Lake Michigan beaches, that’s scary.
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Changing the status quo: this Meachem stormwater pond will be re-engineered to include
a tallgrass riparian buffer, sediment forebay, filtering marshes, and outlets into the new wetland.
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With a design grant from the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, Root-Pike WIN will soon begin the design to convert the Meachem Road stormwater pond into a constructed wetland. The pond’s transformation will allow for additional pollutant processing and habitat for a variety of native species.
Here is where we make the peanut butter cup... the new design will also allow excess stormwater to discharge into the adjacent 60-acre Meachem Preserve Wetland Mitigation Bank. The conversion of this standard pond to a constructed wetland will gradually release the cursed stormwater, cleansing it through segmented natural weirs and the wetland mitigation bank.
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Instead of having untreated stormwater flow out of the pond into low-performing roadside swales to the Pike River,
water will be diverted first into the wetland bank for treatment and infiltration.
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The creation of the Meachem Preserve Wetland Mitigation Bank was funded through the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wetland mitigation funds from the Foxconn development. Ironically, the wetland is not receiving as much water as it could handle, nor what is needed to prosper. Integrating these two features will change that. No hocus-pocus here – just a good idea with resilient re-engineering. |
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Better together: the stormwater pond will ultimately release more runoff into
the existing wetland mitigation bank allowing both to prosper.
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Today, when the pond overflows, collected runoff – and all the gruesome stuff in it – empties into the roadside grass swale that directly leads to the impaired Pike River. The new design will allow for more stormwater to move slowly through the wetland preserve – infiltrating and cleansing it before it hits Nelson Creek, the Pike River, and ultimately Lake Michigan. |
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Stormwater currently overflows from the Meachem Pond and ends up untreated into the Pike River and Lake Michigan. | |
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Ghoulish ponds beware! This pond retrofit will be a regional case study to encourage better stormwater management design for new developments and retrofit options for current ponds. Root-Pike WIN, Racine County and KCI Technologies, the engineering partner, will be advancing the design and construction process together. The pond retrofit project is partially funded by the Wisconsin Department of Administration, Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Additional design and construction funds are needed to complete the project.
The integration idea was evoked by Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave. While commemorating the opening of the Meachem Wetland Preserve, he asked if the adjacent stormwater pond, owned by Racine County, might be of additional use to the preserve. As drier-than-expected conditions developed in the wetland, KCI Technologies’ Regional Practice Leader, Joe Pfeiffer, quickly realized that a “win-win” engineering solution was more than sorcery. The existing 7.5-acre stormwater pond will be converted into a constructed wetland featuring a sediment forebay, and low and high marsh areas with abundant native vegetation. Peanut butter, meet chocolate!
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Working together: Joe Pfeiffer of KCI talks with Jonathan Delagrave
and Dave DeGroot about integrating the stormwater pond and wetland.
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Early analysis from KCI Technologies shows that the majority of macabre runoff will be “managed” (absorbed and filtered) in the mitigation wetland. A pollutant load reduction of 1,020 lbs. of suspended solids, 14.25 lbs. of Phosphorus, and 25.5 lbs. of Nitrogen is expected annually once the cauldron of polluted runoff has been retrofitted. | |
The Meachem Preserve Wetland Mitigation Bank shortly after its creation in 2020. | |
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Ultimately, this project will slow, cleanse, and infiltrate the wraith of stormwater runoff. Starting in the Village of Mount Pleasant, excess stormwater from the pond flows through the Village of Somers and then to the Pike River where it exits into Lake Michigan in the City of Kenosha.
Operational support for Root-Pike WIN’s development of this project, and many other magical stormwater projects, is made possible by the Fund for Lake Michigan and Microsoft. Their support has been essential to advancing Root-Pike WIN’s mission and making our communities more resilient.
Need a “win-win” stormwater pond potion? Let us conjure one up for you.
Dave Giordano
Executive Director
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