Featured Project

Jack Russell Memorial Library
City of Hartford, Wisconsin

Project Description
The location of the proposed Jack Russell Memorial Library is on the bank of the Rubicon River in the City of Hartford, Wisconsin.

The existing site is a gravel parking lot used as overflow parking for the downtown businesses. While a great new asset to Hartford’s downtown, the proposed library site includes paved parking, patio and small landscaped areas. There is little to no buffer between the library site and the Rubicon River, therefore storm water runoff from the new site needs to be stored and treated to meet State and Local regulations. The site must meet State of Wisconsin storm water runoff requirements of 40% Total Suspended Solids removal. The proposed site does not have land available for traditional storm water detention ponds, therefore more creative measures are desired.

Our Solution
The parking lot and building design take up about 90% of the available site. Two small green spaces remain. Stormwater Solutions Engineering, LLC proposed to use these spaces to store and treat storm water runoff in bioretention devices. A bioretention device (see detail) is essentially a rain garden with an engineered mix of soil, a perforated under drain, a stone storage area and overflow pipe for saturated or frozen ground conditions. We refer to them as a friendlier term “biogarden”. From the surface, they appear to be a landscaped depression with Wisconsin Native water loving plants, which are also tolerant of dry conditions in summer months. In addition to two biogardens, two other storm water treatment/storage features have been added. A green roof has been incorporated to part of the building roof. The roof will have soil/vegetation packets installed over the front of the roof, slowing and holding the roof runoff during rain events. In addition to the storm water benefits, the green roof also moderates the temperature of the roof, keeping it cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Lastly, part of the roof and a small amount of parking lot runoff will be directed to underground storage. The underground storage is made up of 600 feet of 30” corrugated metal pipe, with a constricted orifice outlet to control the flow rate. The combination of biogardens and underground storage reduces the overall peak flow from the site to less than what exists today, and provides a 90% improvement to the water quality (total suspended solids) from what it is today!