Opportunity Title:

Intern at Urban Watershed Research Facility (UWRF)

Research Area:

Water

EPA Lab/Center/Office:

National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL)

Location:

Edison, NJ

Duration:

6 months

Brief Summary:

EPA advocates green infrastructure (GI) as a cost-effective approach to managing stormwater runoff. The Agency needs data on long-term performance, effectiveness, interaction with the existing environmental systems collected, and life-cycle costs of GI collected on a real-world scale. Research is needed to provide the information that can be extrapolated to the national scale using larger watersheds.

Opportunity Description:

Stormwater discharges release pathogenic bacteria, protozoan, and viruses to receiving waters.  Stormwater runoff is commonly treated by stormwater control measures (SCMs), which include wet ponds, wetlands, bioretention areas, dry detention basins, permeable pavements, rain gardens, and proprietary devices. Increasingly, SCMs are being incorporated on-site as low impact development (LID) or as green infrastructure (GI) in the municipal right of way. Permeable pavement, an alternative to conventional pavement, is a LID/GI infiltration system where the stormwater runoff infiltrates into the ground through a permeable layer of pavement or other stabilized surface reducing the need for runoff drainage and treatment offsite.  Currently, there is a research to evaluate the performance of permeable pavement in removing indicator organisms such as fecal coliform, enterococci and E. coli from infiltrating stormwater runoff on-going. 

The EPA’s Office of Research and Development operates the Urban Watershed Research Facility (UWRF) at the Edison Environmental Center (EEC) in Edison, New Jersey. At the EEC in 2009, the U.S. EPA constructed a functional, 0.4 ha, 110-space parking lot that is surfaced with three different permeable pavement types: permeable interlocking concrete pavers (PICP), pervious concrete (PC), and porous asphalt (PA).Flow-weighted samples were collected using programmable automatic samplers and analyzed for indicator organisms such as fecal coliform, enterococci, and E. coli.

Opportunities for Professional Development:

Can present in conferences; write journal articles; participate in professional organizations.

Point of Contact or Mentor:

Ariamalar Selvakumar (selvakumar.ariamalar@epa.gov)