by Tom Damm
It’s a four-peat.
For the fourth consecutive year, the University of Maryland, College Park has won high honors in EPA’s Campus RainWorks Challenge, a national collegiate competition to design the best ideas for capturing stormwater on campus before it can harm waterways.
A UMD team took second place nationally in the Master Plan category for “The Champion Gateway” project. The project blends green infrastructure features into a campus entryway and pedestrian corridor adjacent to a proposed light rail system.
Along with providing more aesthetic appeal, the 7.9-acre site design – with its 367 new trees, permeable pavement, bioswales, rain garden and soil improvements – generates some heady environmental benefits, like:
- A 40 percent increase in tree canopy and a reduction in stormwater runoff of 44 percent.
- An increase in permeable surface from 5 to 74 percent.
- The removal of 273 pounds of air pollutants and the sequestering of 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide – each year.
Green infrastructure allows stormwater to soak in rather than run off hard surfaces with contaminants in tow, flooding local streets and polluting local waters.
Chalking up impressive design numbers and wowing the judges is nothing new for UMD teams in the Campus RainWorks Challenge.
The university won first place awards in 2015 and 2016 for designs to retrofit a five-acre parking lot and to capture and treat stormwater on a seven-acre site next to the campus chapel, and won a second place award last year for its “(Un)loading Nutrients” design to transform a campus loading dock and adjacent parking lot into a safer pedestrian walkway with 6,660 square feet of plantings and 18 percent less impervious surface.
Dr. Victoria Chanse, a faculty advisor to all four UMD winning teams, said the competition “serves as an ongoing catalyst to encourage universities to develop innovative, sustainable learning landscapes that draw upon collaborations among students and faculty from a diverse set of disciplines.”
Check out more information on how stormwater runoff impacts your community.
About the Author: Tom Damm has been with EPA since 2002 and now serves as communications coordinator for the region’s Water Protection Division





The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its 

progress report. Many of the examples required decades of effort, and are a testament to the long-standing commitment, innovation and hard work of the EPA staff who do this work on a day-to-day basis. They provide lessons for how we can all work together more effectively to address disproportionate environmental impacts, health disparities, and economic distress in our nation’s most vulnerable communities so they are cleaner, healthier and more prosperous places to live, work, play and learn.






I was very fortunate to become a student at the RichmondBUILD Academy. I must admit it was not easy to get in the Academy and even harder to endure the twelve weeks of intensive training. They pushed me physically and mentally. They helped me regain my self-esteem and confidence. Through the RichmondBUILD program, I learned the skills and knowledge necessary to enter the environmental industry and earned valuable certifications, such as my Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) 40-hour certification, OSHA 10-hour, work zone safety, and first aid/CPR. The Academy also taught me to follow my passion: Solar!
I spent over 20 years of my professional life in the transportation business, working in operations, pricing and management before losing my job during the recession in 2008. In January 2013, after being unemployed for nearly five years, I found myself in Tacoma, WA applying for food stamps for the first time in my life. Like most people, I’ve had good and bad times; this for me was the very lowest point in my life. As I walked out of the Washington Department of Social and Health Services office, I spotted a flyer for the City of Tacoma’s environmental job training program.