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Team 1f Proposed Solution → Improving Stormwater Management in Gaithersburg, USA
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<aside> 📽️ Watch our short video to learn more about our project!!
Team1f_Stormwater_management_Gaithersburg.mp4
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<aside> ℹ️ Mahdi Fedai - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mfedai06/ Bianca Ghiorghiu - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-ghiorghiu-482512313/ Anahit Sahakyan - www.linkedin.com/in/anahitsahakyan Harvey Wong - www.linkedin.com/in/harvey-wong-737034397
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<aside> ℹ️ What is the problem?
The town of Gaithersburg is faced with the issue of impervious surfaces because dense urbanization is required to accommodate for the influx of residents.
As the industrial and residential sectors continue to grow, new development and redevelopment inevitably introduces more pavements, parking lots and rooftops, which does not allow rainwater to seep into the ground naturally. Instead, water rides these surfaces with increasing velocity and picks up pollutants before entering a storm drain that funnels back into local streams like Great Seneca Creek and Muddy Branch, eventually contaminating the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The impacts are not only environmental, but it also affects economical and social dynamics within the community.
This problem involves commercial property owners who face financial risks from flooding and pollution, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission treats runoff water and manages nearby forests, the City of Gaithersburg (taxpayers) who helps fund mitigation projects, and local wildlife conversationalists.
Survey results of “City of Gaithersburg Headwaters Drainage Study”
(Dewberry Engineers Inc., 2024)
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Solution
The proposed solution is a combination of preventative and corrective strategies, introducing roof gardens, rain gardens and upgraded filtration systems to the city.
Implementation
The first stage of the phased implementation will focus on establishing pilot rain gardens and filtration upgrades in high risk runoff zones. This comparatively lower-cost stage will serve as a measuring tool for the following stages, where the project will take a larger scale, establishing green roofs, rain gardens and filtration systems city-wide.
Addressing the needs of stakeholders
By improving the storm management systems in the city we would decrease flooding, sewage overflows, and water contamination for the residents. Moreover, this would provide the city government with a long-term, low-cost and sustainable solution that will improve infrastructure. Regarding developers and construction companies, this project aims to provide them with long-term stability and policy, which will make the process of constructing residential areas easier.
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Our main knowledge gap resides around long term water absorption performance of rain gardens under sustained heavy rainfall, as well as the uncertainty surrounding regular maintenance by private property owners. These factors can essentially reduce the effectiveness and compromise the projects long term survival. To address this however we proposed a phased approach starting with a pilot in high risk prone areas. This reduces material costs while allowing us to evaluate durability, absorption capacity and community engagement. Early results allow us to refine design choices as well as maintenance needs and even confirm whether wider implementations are feasible and cost effective. However, our success is ultimately determined by the shifting behaviour of climate change and the long-term commitment given by the community. No matter the solution, no design or funding model can fully guarantee the restoration of nature without ongoing adaptation and collective effort.
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<aside> 💡 The water quality in Gaithersburg, especially in the Life Sciences Center, gets worse when there is a lot of hard surfaces like pavement and buildings (42%) and not enough trees covering the area (12%). This leads to more polluted water running off into the area. Muddy Branch is still considered "good," but Watts Branch has now been rated "poor" because pollution from development is harming the fish and affecting the water people drink.
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Through our projects, we are aiming to tackle SDG 6 on Clean Water and Sanitation as well SDG 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities.