ASCE has honored Northwest Resiliency Park with the 2025 Innovation in Sustainable Civil Engineering Award for mitigating localized and neighborhood-wide flooding by capturing and retaining over one million gallons of stormwater runoff from the surrounding sewer shed, as well as from the site itself while integrating active recreational community features.
The Northwest Resiliency Park was planned using Sustainable SITES principles and scoring. The final park design achieves the SITES Silver rating and includes several innovative elements that will allow for ongoing monitoring to inform future resilient projects. First, the green stormwater infrastructure systems throughout the project are installed with monitoring wells for ongoing monitoring, and the city plans to partner with local academic institutions such as Stevens Institute to track and monitor key performance criteria for the park. Secondly, a comprehensive maintenance manual and program has been developed and implemented with the park. The city has dedicated personnel who will implement sustainable practices in horticulture as the park’s plants mature as adaptation is required in management and species selection.
Additionally, the million-gallon stormwater system’s outlet controls are fitted with an OPTI-Sensor that regulates the pumps and drawdown of the stormwater storage. This allows the system to smartly respond to dynamic water inflow and weather conditions on a daily basis. Finally, the site achieves one of its SITES rating innovation credits by including an experimental glass-based soil in one of the planting beds. Planting soils in modern bio-retention stormwater systems have a large percentage of sand content, which is a dwindling resource from local quarries. Using glass-cullet as an alternative to sand is not only innovative, but has industry-wide impact if shown to be a viable alternative to sand. The NWRP will monitor the plant health and performance of the glass-based soil bed as part of ongoing research the design team is undertaking through ongoing grant-funded efforts.
The Innovation in Sustainable Engineering Award recognizes a civil engineering project for its creativity in the form of innovative sustainability. Projects must demonstrate adherence to the principles of economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
