ShawneeDispatch.com

Students and parents alike argue that the current proposed method for stormwater detention at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School is outdated and will ruin the school’s environmental lab.

A large group of community members turned out Tuesday for a public forum concerning the Northwest environmental lab. School district patrons, along with current and former students, asked that the Shawnee Mission USD 512 Board of Education consider different alternatives for stormwater rentention required because of additions currently under construction at the school.

“We don’t have to do it the easy way — we can do it the cool way,” Devin Wilson, patron, said.

Before the public comment period, school officials and the construction project manager presented plans thus far for the lab. Craig Denny, president of the school board, told the audience that while a preliminary design had been put together to determine the applicability for grant funding, nothing was set in stone.

“No decision will be made tonight, and it may not be made for some time to come,” Denny said.

Adam Sterns, project manager, reviewed all of the 2004 bond issue additions to the school: a gymnasium addition, music addition, new rear drive, new baseball field and new synthetic turf football field.

The city requires something to control the increased stormwater coming off the property because of the building additions. Contractors first met with the city to discuss this in March 2007 and had basic plans for construction of the additions approved by the city in October.

Currently, water from the student parking lot and other western areas of the school’s property drain through a pipe into the environmental lab. The water moves through a stream in the lab to another pipe, which takes it south to Little Mill Creek.

Sterns said it was in late October that Mike Pisani, who teaches the environmental biology course, asked if the school district could look into doing something to control the erosion and trash in the environmental lab. Contractors learned that additional funding was available through the county’s Best Management Practices program, which aims to study various stormwater detention facilities to see which work best to handle stormwater and reduce pollution in the local environment.

Contractors created a proposal to create a dry detention basin with wetland vegetation in the lab including signage and enhanced trails, as well as using baffle boxes and oil grit separators to help reduce pollution from the student parking lot. Stormwater also would be collected from eastern areas of the school property and piped to the lab.

In February, the county’s Stormwater Management Advisory Council gave approval for Best Management Practices funds to be used for such a plan.

Sterns said in the proposed design, the area would have various native grasses, so it would not be mowed or have a manicured look.

He said the new wetland area would require less space than other solutions — about an acre and a half total — and after marking all trees in the southern portion of the lab with trunks 8 inches wide or larger, contractors decided to move the detention area slightly farther north, allowing them to continue to use existing piping but save more trees.

“We’re probably down to removing maybe 10 trees that are 8 inches or larger, where when it was further south, we would have had to remove more like 30 trees that were 8 inches or more,” Sterns said.

But patrons who spoke at the meeting argued that the plan was an outdated method for dealing with stormwater, and contractors should look at detaining the water where it falls.

Sheila Shockey, a patron who works in stormwater management, and David Dods, a stormwater engineer, said because there was already a wetland area in the lab, reconstructing the area would be harder than expected and likely would take out more than 10 trees.

Dods said he spoke with the students and knows that the eastern area of the lab, which is closest to the student parking lot, includes mostly invasive species of trees. He asked why a subsurface flow wetland area couldn’t be created there instead, where there would be a more natural progression from the lab’s prairie area on the north to the deciduous forest in the south.

Dods and Shockey also suggested using rain gardens in other areas of the property and a bioswell meadow southeast of the new baseball field to capture rain where it falls. They said a cistern could collect water from the practice fields, and the water could be reused to water the fields. Water from the football field could be easily collected if the contractors made the drainage system they already planned to build under the field a foot deeper.

“There’s plenty of opportunities here to turn this into a world-class facility,” Dods said.

Several other speakers echoed their comments, saying the lab’s natural assets needed to be preserved. Sterns said he was concerned that the county would only provide additional funding for a plan in which stormwater detention could be measured, and they had not seemed interested in rain gardens and bioswells.

Dods protested that stormwater could be measured at its current levels and then compared after other improvements were put in place.

“Don’t let the tail wag the dog,” Dods said. “Don’t put a pond in the middle of a forest just because the county wants to study a pond.”

Several students spoke, offering to raise money for the lab and build rain gardens themselves.

“Our class has three parts: the outdoor lab, the classroom and the greenhouse, and if you take out any of those three, the class just isn’t as good,” said Matt Spur, a current student. “When you take out part of the lab, you take out the whole lab, and when you take out the whole lab, you take out the program.”

In an e-mail to community members sent Friday morning, Northwest principal Bill Harrington said since the meeting district officials had met with representatives from the architectural firm to develop a new timeline for the stormwater detention project, which must be completed by April 21, 2009.

Harrington said before May 14, the district will involve community leaders and Northwest environmental education teachers as it devlops options. Architects will then create drawings needed to move the project forward.

Another community meeting is tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. May 27 in the Northwest auditorium to present the plans to interested patrons.

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1. 1 May 2008 at 5:03 p.m.

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   carolb (Anonymous) says…

   Consider the preservation of the outdoor lab as an investment in the future. School board members need to be aware that this decision can result in long term damage to an area that has been a wonderful resource to the children of this school district for more than 30 years.

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