Best Management Practices for Stormwater Infrastructure in Two Urban Chesapeake Bay Subwatersheds

In fall 2018, the National Science Foundation awarded 1.5 million dollars to a team of multidisciplinary investigators from Agriculture, Extension, Engineering, and Public Health from the University of Maryland including Dr. Sacoby Wilson to study stormwater management in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD. The five-year project’s specific objectives and activities are to: (1) document neighborhood issues and needs in informing stormwater best-management practices; (2) evaluate stormwater volume and quality, flooding risk, trash accumulation, and mosquito production within the watersheds; (3) develop a tool that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to guide watershed management; and 4) enhance community awareness and positive behaviors to improve water quality and protect urban green space. Dr. Wilson previously worked on a project awarded $700,000 from the EPA to investigate how to improve urban stormwater conditions by increasing adoption of Best Management Practices (BMPs) by using the community-based participatory research (CBPR) process.The objectives of this study were to: 1) identify barriers to BMP adoption, 2) spatially target stormwater hot spots with appropriate BMPs, filtered by adoption likelihood, and 3) lower BMP adoption thresholds.