Rainwater is considered a nuisance to students sloshing through it on the way to class, but the University could find a new sustainable resource in storm water drainage.The University’s current policy on storm water drainage is to prevent flooding and damage to the property, said Jim Mayne, Facility Services associate director of utility operations.But new methods of water management can create sites to collect storm water for reintroduction into the system as a resource, said Buck Abbey, landscape architecture associate professor.Abbey said he does not think the University sees storm water as a natural resource to harvest. “Instead of thinking about water as something you want to move out after rain, we could capture and store the water to be able to use for other types of purposes,” said Jan Boydstun, senior environmental scientist at the Lousiana Department of Environmental Quality.These purposes include irrigation on campus and using the water for toilets instead of clean water pumped in, Mayne said.Water management sites would also help filter out pollutants in a naturalized way, Abbey said.”When raindrops [run off streets], they take sediments, solid waste and up to 94 different pollutants that have been identified by the [Enviornmental Protection Agency],” he said. Spilled prescription drugs or remnants of the drugs found in human waste are the newest pollutants that have been found in water runoff, he said.A common pollutant comes from car-oil leakage, Abbey said. When it rains, oil and other pollutants are washed away with the water drainage.A centralized drainage system sends this runoff from the University into surrounding catch basins and canals, like Bayou Manchac and Bayou Fountain, Mayne said.As the runoff flows south, the water takes the pollutants and deposits them in other bodies of water, Abbey said.”If New Orleans and Baton Rouge keep dumping pollution into Lake Ponchartrain, we can kill it,” Abbey said.New ways of water management would collect rainwater and allow it to go through a naturalized process in which the water would infiltrate the soil, evaporate as a gas or be absorbed by plants, Abbey said.Through a naturalized process, pollutants are filtered out instead of carried and deposited into another site, he said.An example of a water management site is a rain garden, which uses wetland plants that grow in stiff soils and soak up water, Abbey said.Construction of rain gardens on campus is a feasible option, especially in areas like the Dodson West Garden, he said. By raising drains a few inches from the ground, more rainwater could soak into the ground to be filtered naturally, and the University could still prevent flooding, he said. The University pumps water from the Baton Rouge water system and does not practice any water reclamation, Mayne said.The University spends about $165,000 a month on water, he said, though water is relatively cheap.Because of the low cost of water, it will be difficult for the University to consider the benefits of a sustainable storm water management system, he said.”Right now conservation projects are on the back burner, and water is on the back burner of the back burner,” he said.But Boydstun and Abbey said they feel storm water management could be a beneficial and sustainable resource to the University.”LSU is in a perfect position with design departments if they could work together with their waste water and energy in a green infrastructure and try to look at things to maximize and utilize the nutrients as an asset on campus instead of pushing them downstream,” Boydstun said.—-Contact Kristen M’lissa Rowlett at [email protected]