Print
E-Mail
tool name
closeStormwater partnership is growing
Neil Pierson/of The Herald
City Manager Gary McLean isn’t afraid to call Puyallup a guinea pig when it comes to testing and developing new stormwater systems.
The city has developed a partnership with the local Washington State University Research and Extension Center over the past few years. That alliance took another step earlier this month when the state’s Department of Ecology (DOE) announced that Puyallup will get nearly $1 million in grant money for a pair of projects.
The WSU-Puyallup branch, which has been rapidly refocusing its mission on urban growth issues, plans to contract with the city on the projects. One grant will pay to replace a defunct DOE assessment tool for stormwater technologies. The other will fund a technical resource center at the WSU-Puyallup campus where researchers can design and test new strategies for dealing with stormwater.
Stark said the local partnership also includes researchers at the University of Washington-Tacoma. For a smaller city, Puyallup is quickly emerging as a major player in stormwater management techniques, Stark said.
“We’re going to be the leaders in the state for stormwater,” he said, “which I think is very exciting for our region.”
McLean said Puyallup is prepared to be “a great laboratory” for WSU and wants to be “guinea pigs for technologies being used around the world on how we deal with stormwater management.”
Because of the region’s heavy annual rainfall, McLean felt the city could apply the lessons it learns and pass them on to other municipalities and industries across the country. Constructing rain gardens, green roofs and pervious pavement throughout the city could have benefits beyond the environment, he noted.
“It could be an economic beacon for Puyallup,” McLean said. “We’re hoping that new companies will come to our area and bring jobs as these systems prove themselves.”
Stormwater technologies have already proven valuable in Puyallup. In August, eight residents of a northwest neighborhood built rain gardens and watched as runoff seeped into the ground instead of going down the nearest storm drain.
A portion of the DOE grants could help Puyallup hire an assistant stormwater engineer. That person would oversee the changes to the assessment system and resource center activities on the city’s end, McLean said.
Stark said the new assessment system will replace one the state is no longer using. The money to fund a system redesign will be gone in two years, he added.
“We’re trying to develop this program but there’s not a whole lot of money to actually run these things,” Stark explained. “We’re looking for more permanent funding to do that later.”