Climate-smart resilient green corridors optimize green infrastructure
Climate change both impacts and is affected by the ways we live, work and play. Corridors - built and natural - are passageways and linkages that not only facilitate activities in our daily lives but provide both scale and impact with regards to the viability of both built and natural systems. Corridors encompass and connect landscapes, geographies, jurisdictions, and the constituents they represent for specific purposes. Corridors facilitate market-driven value chains for consumers, industries, and communities. They also provide an ecological framework for scaled systems approaches, thus implicated in environmental policies, practices and technologies to reduce pollution impacts within certain geographic regions, such as that of state implementation plans (SIPs) for meeting ambient air quality standards or total maximum daily loads (TMDL) for meeting water quality standards in specific waterways, thus underscoring the diverse nature and dynamics of corridors.
Along these lines, one type of corridor concept that is resonating across a number of sectors is that of a Climate-Smart Resilient Green Corridor (CSRGC) – nature-based, climate sensitive, partnership-driven and equity-oriented, it uses identified impacts and opportunities within the corridor to achieve net zero climate and environmental outcomes, along with targeting equitable opportunities for improved community health and economic viability. Green, natured-based approaches are prioritized within CSRGCs, along with larger scale green investments that drive market competition and reduce overall costs while increasing economic investments and job growth opportunities throughout the Corridor.
The CSRGC construct ideally works within a watershed system context to drive innovative design, practices, technologies and jobs across the water, energy, and food (W.E.F.) spectrum, while reducing waste streams to better achieve net zero impacts for the whole of the watershed corridor.
The CSRGC optimizes MS4 program implementation by leveraging decentralized, distributed infrastructure opportunities to target green infrastructure(GI) and nature-based approaches (e.g., green streets with solar-led lighting or regenerative farms with enhanced green infrastructure bioretention and net-xero manure management for preventing nutrient runoff downstream and GHGs, along with solar panels for use of renewable energy, housing and schools with GI and solar) that enable greater collective resource investments, impact and outcomes. The CSRGC Corridor has key geospatial, temporal and technological aspects, including the address of upstream and downstream watershed impacts, which ensure for success. By planning, supporting, and placing complementary practices and technologies in close and/or strategic proximity, the dynamics and outputs from one facility and/or practice can positively support another versus having a negative impact.
A CSRGC’s watershed driven use of decentralized green infrastructure can help control flooding and water quality, encourage groundwater replenishment, and lessen the need for new grey infrastructure. Those grey elements like detention ponds and various storage chambers and valves can be optimized to minimize peak flows using smart technology, such as Continuous Monitoring and Adaptive Control (CMAC). Applications of these technologies at the site level can have profound impacts related to the reduction of flooding impacts during large storm events and enhance water quality treatment. At the corridor scale, they can collectively minimize erosive or damaging flows or pollutants in upstream and downstream, allow trade-off of flows per hydraulic and hydrology dynamics to minimize erosive or damaging flows and/or pollutant loads and institute a peak flow threshold for varying flows to minimize erosive or damaging flows and/or pollutants in all applicable parts of the watershed corridor.
An innovative tool which can support the CSRGC approach is that of the Watershed Resources Registry (WRR) (https://watershedresourcesregistry.org). Developed by US EPA Region 3 in partnership with USACE, USDOT/FHWA, Maryland State Highway Administration, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Environmental Services, Maryland Department of Environment and numerous other partners, its purpose was to integrate and streamline the address of stormwater, wetlands and other Clean Water Act regulatory requirements within a watershed context through improved identification and targeting of opportunity “sites” for restoration, mitigation and preservation. Sea-level rise, demographics and other environmental, social and economic data have also been incorporated for improved needs assessment.
Due to its success, the WRR has been adopted by multiple states for regulatory, watershed and climate-related applications. It has also assisted in expediting MS4 program compliance-related integrated green stormwater infrastructure planning and implementation, resulting in significant savings for municipalities.
For example, Prince George’s County Clean Water Partnership (CWP) (https://thecleanwaterpartnership.com/), used the WRR for analysis of integrated green stormwater infrastructure opportunities within the Anacostia River watershed corridor to help the successful installation of 2000 green acres in less than 3 years. The WRR not only succeeded in providing more than 96% accuracy for choosing the right locations but was adapted as both a transparent stormwater bmp mapping and outcomes reporting tool for the community to track actions and progress in meeting community needs and target outcomes.
The WRR directs users to a variety of effective potential stormwater management sites that are strategic for restoring healthy hydrology and maximizing watershed and climate resilience benefits. The tool leverages a host of existing GIS data — from soils to 303(D) impaired streams, along with demographics, sea level rise, transportation networks and other land-use data. It also allows for importing of data and mapping outputs from other GIS screening tools such as EJ-Screen.2.1 (https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen), the Whitehouse Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CJEST - https://screeningtool.geoplatform.gov/) to include disadvantaged communities and census tracts that are overburdened and underserved, along with the First Street Foundation Climate Risk mapper (https://firststreet.org/risk-factor/) to include climate risks – flooding, drought, wildfires, etc. While users still need to ground truth selected WRR locations to determine which is best for their specific needs, the WRR can significantly reduce site assessment time and resources spent on the ground.
Tools such as the WRR along with complementary technologies and practices can unlock the potential for CSRCGs to cost effectively expedite and enhance the use of green, climate-friendly nature-based practices for MS4 community implementation and facilitate greater collaboration between the numerous MS4 communities – cities and towns and townships to create and achieve greater collective value and outcomes towards economic, environmental and public health resilience and sustainability.
Dominique Lueckenhoff | SVP - Corporate Affairs, EHS & Sustainability
Dominique Lueckenhoff is SVP - Corporate Affairs, EHS & Sustainability for Hugo Neu. Lueckenhoff can be reached at [email protected].
In addition to having her own environmental consultancy, Dominique Lueckenhoff serves as the Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs, EHS & Sustainability at Hugo Neu Corporation. Reporting to the Chair and CEO, she leads the company’s global efforts in corporate sustainability, climate resiliency, environment, health and safety compliance, practices and policy, public and community affairs, and green business growth and investment. Ms. Lueckenhoff also manages Hugo Neu’s sponsorship support and partnership with a variety of public, private, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions, particularly that of the Stevens Institute of Technology’s Environmental Engineering Sustainability Management Program, supporting the Hugo Neu Sustainability Seminar Series and graduate student mentoring activities. Beyond her immediate corporate responsibilities, she serves as the following: Senior Fellow for the U.S. Water Alliance; ; Chair of the National Municipal Stormwater Association’s (NMSA) Community-Based Public Private Partnerships (CBP3) Center of Excellence (Water, Energy and Equitable Economic Resilience) – an activity which has evolved from a program she originated and developed while serving as a water director at USEPA; Associate Professor of Practice on the faculty of Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability. Lueckenhoff also serves on the Board of Cousteau’s Earth Echo International NGO, as well as the Board of the American Sustainable Business Council Network, while supporting its national Clean Water Is Good for Business Coalition. She also serves as an Environmental Justice Advisor for the climate focused Carbon180 NGO. Her entrepreneurial drive for climate-smart solutions has also led to the recent business launch of Ecochar Environmental Solutions, where she is a managing partner, employing scalable decarbonization technologies for environmental treatment of soil and water. Lueckenhoff is also a member of Chief, a national network focused on connecting and supporting exemplary women executive leaders.
Recognized as a national thought leader and expert in green infrastructure innovations, equity, and sustainable communities, she has over 25 years of national award-winning program management and collaborative problem-solving experience across multiple USEPA programs protecting the nation’s air, water, and land. Prior to joining Hugo Neu, Lueckenhoff served as Senior Advisor to the EPA Region 3 Administrator where she developed and led initiatives related to innovative community-based public private partnerships, next generation technologies and alternative market-based approaches to achieving “faster, cheaper, greener” environmental improvements supporting equitable, resilient, sustainable communities. Lueckenhoff also led the EPA Region 3 Mid-Atlantic Water Protection Division for a number of years as Deputy Director and Acting Director directing administration and management of all division activities with oversight responsibilities for DC, DE, MD, PA, VA and WVA, while serving on EPA’s national board of water directors. In addition to holding undergraduate and graduate degrees with honors in Microbiology, Chemistry & Biophysics as a National Science Foundation Fellow, she received her U.S. Senior Executive Service (SES) certification as a graduate of the US Treasury Executive Institute and US EPA SES Candidate Development Program.
