Rich Wagner hopes to scoop up stormwater management ideas that will not only cut costs for the City and developers, but also attract green businesses to the Auburn Environmental Park District.
To make it happen, the Auburn City Councilman will tap the bright young minds of 20 WSU graduate students.
On Aug. 16, the City Council authorized a consulting agreement with Washington State University to bring those students to Auburn and set them to work at the proposed 260-acre park district between West Main Street and 15th Street Northwest.
The total cost of the agreement is $95,000, and the City will use its stormwater utility fund to pay for it.
“They will bring cutting-edge-technology thought and intellectual thought that is beyond where everyday engineers think,” Wagner said. “Plus, these will be graduate students who are fully capable almost at a professional level already, with new ideas that only young people have.
“Ideas that include types of pavements, ways that buildings channel their water, ways that buildings capture heat and ways that buildings reduce their carbon footprint. All this stuff about greenness, these folks are out on the cutting-edge of it while the rest of us are still trying to catch up,” Wagner added.
Auburn’s Environmental Park, which makes use of waterlogged land left by the state’s construction of State Route 167 in 1970, will not only provide trails and birding towers and an interpretive center but also will support the development of medical, biotech and green technologies, including energy conservation, engineering, water quality and similar uses within the City. In addition, it will promote the incorporation of sustainable design and green building practices.
Monday’s agreement is the outgrowth of a year of talks between City staff and the Planning and Community Development and Public Works committees that have centered on bringing planning documents up to date to create a detailed engineering, architectural and biological plan for sustainable development in the EP.
Recently, City staff and Wagner met with the Washington State University Institute for Sustainable Design to talk about working together on the project. Dr. Michael Wolcott, Director of the WSU Institute for Sustainable Design, will act as project manager and oversee the work of the student researchers. Wagner will be the City Council liaison.
“The bottom line is actually to save money. Storm water management has become such a huge expense for developers and cities that we have to find new ways to do it,” Wagner said. “We just can’t keep doing it the other way with pipes and ponds and downspouts. Every university is working on it, and WSU is among the leaders in working on this sort of thing.”
