Supporting project integration and translation: Clinton River Smart Stormwater Management

Abstract

The Clinton River Watershed in SE Michigan faces stormwater challenges such as flooding and degraded water quality, which are exacerbated by climate change impacts and increasing urbanization in the watershed. The watershed covers 760 square miles in four Michigan counties and is comprised of thousands of bodies of water and hundreds of miles of streams. As the most populated watershed in Michigan, the area is home to 71 communities, 1.5 million people, and a range of diverse plants and wildlife (CRWC Website, 2022). River headwaters begin in rural Northern Oakland County, and the system ultimately drains into Lake St. Clair, which is part of the Great Lakes system (DiCocco and Graves, 2022). In 1987, the Clinton River was listed as an Area of Concern (AOC) by the Environmental Protection Agency. Since then, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) has provided more than $43 million to fund projects and restoration initiatives with the goal of delisting the Clinton River as an AOC. There are many existing and emerging tools and technologies to assist with stormwater management (e.g., water sensors, modeling, forecasting, remote sensing, etc.), but these tools are often not applied at the watershed scale. Researchers of the Clinton River Smart Stormwater Management Project aim to develop and integrate stormwater management technologies and apply them to the Clinton River system as a whole. This will demonstrate a systems-based and advanced technology approach to effective stormwater management in the Clinton River system, and will assist water resource managers in making informed and proactive decisions. The project began in 2018 and is funded by the US EPA with GLRI funds. This research, modeling, and outreach effort is led by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) in collaboration with the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Currently, the project is in phase II with the possibility of obtaining funding for a phase III. Throughout phase I, the project encountered communication and connectivity problems which are inherent to complex, technical, multi-party research projects. Principal Investigators (PIs) and clients recognized a need for further project support to combat these challenges, so our team of five masters students from the University of Michigan School for Environmental and Sustainability (UM SEAS) was brought on to the project. This was a unique example of both principal investigators and a funding entity (MI EGLE) recognizing the need for boundary-spanning work, and intentionally allocating resources for its completion. Our masters project team was brought on in January of 2021 to help connect project actors across disciplinary and institutional boundaries in four primary project areas: 1) Decision Support System assistance and stakeholder engagement, 2) project administration and evaluation, 3) GIS support and technical assistance, and 5) the design and implementation of a subproject on E. coli dynamics in the Clinton River. The following report contains descriptions and outcomes of our work in each of these project areas.