The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded Mississippi State University a $20,000 grant, along with Kansas State University, in order to carry out green infrastructure demonstrations and training projects.
Green infrastructure treats storm water runoff as a resource rather than waste by using vegetation, soils and natural processes to manage rainwater runoff.
Students from the landscape architecture, landscape contracting, civil and environmental engineering and art departments will use the grant money to design and construct a 1,500 square-foot rain garden in the courtyard of the landscape architecture department.
This project is  part of the EPA’s Campus RainWorks Challenge, which is a competitive nationwide competition in which the top two competitors are chosen.
upon completion of the project, MSU’s Department of art will produce a video of the project, led by Suzanne Powney, to showcase how much work has gone into the project by all of the students involved in it.
This video will also be part of the grade the project receives from the EPA for how well it is presented.
Cory Gallo, principal investigator on the project and associate professor in the landscape architecture department at MSU, said his hope for the project is for the entire MSU campus to adopt green infrastructure technologies.
 
“By educating current and future practitioners on green infrastructure technologies and their applicability to the South, this effort also will be a regional resource for policymakers to learn about and promote green infrastructure in their communities,” Gallo said in an MSU press release.
Gallo said he worked with Gnaneswar Gude and Suzanne Powney to submit the proposal for the grant through the MSU-based Mississippi Water Resources Research Institute.
“Dr. Gude’s classes will learn about proper water quality sampling techniques while conducting water monitoring,” Gallo said. “Ms. Powney’s graphic design students will create interpretive signs for the facility that my students will design and construct.”
 Gnaneswar Gude,  assistant professor in the civil and environmental engineering department, works with engineering students on the data for the green infrastructure project including the estimation of rainfall runoff and peak flows.
   “The idea was to capture everything, keep it on sight and not losing that water out in the drain,” Gude said. “So we want to keep it on sight because that’s a sustainable design.”
    Edith Martinez-Guerra,  doctoral student in the civil and environmental engineering department, has worked on several of the EPA sponsored projects. Guerra takes rainfall data from the past 100 years in Mississippi and helps with the design based on how much rainfall the state has had and the maximum amount of flow for the specified area.
“We can build a wetland just by building a hole and taking water in it, but that’s where landscape architecture comes into it,” Guerra said. “They make it functionally-pretty, at the same time that they are retaining the water.”
The landscape architecture department provides a class for students interested in participating in the project, and the data they need to begin constructing their design for the project is provided by the civil and environmental engineering students involved.
 “Their students are very good at what they do,” Gude said, referring to the landscape architecture students, “like making the structure working well and keeping everything sustainable, green, and less environmental pollutants, and all that.”
 Gude said winning this award benefits many students in different departments and every student and faculty member on the team is highly important because they all add value to the project. He also said this project deals with real world issues concerning water quality.
  MSU has competed in the Campus RainWorks Challenge for the past three years and came in second place behind Kansas State University in 2013.