Rutgers Center Awarded Grant to Help Improve Coastal Planning

New Brunswick, NJ—Scientists and educators from Rutgers University and the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) have been awarded a grant to develop a StormWater Management Information System (SWMIS). The grant was awarded by the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET), a partnership of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of New Hampshire (UNH). CICEET awarded a total of $2.8 million to thirteen project teams as part of its “Tools for Living Coasts” program.

The Rutgers Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA) and NERR will use the grant monies to create a suite of internet-based geospatial tools coupled to a database management system. SWMIS will provide a watershed-wide, geospatial inventory of existing stormwater management infrastructure such as catchbasins, detention ponds, and infiltration areas, as well as models to evaluate the impact of proposed development and mitigation projects on water resources.

Natural resource protection and land use planning professionals will be able to use SWMIS in the initial planning phases of stormwater infrastructure for new developments as well as ongoing maintenance and restoration. SWMIS will be geared to meet the needs of municipalities and counties in planning and managing their SWMIS infrastructure in a broader watershed context.

This project team is working with municipal and state officials in New Jersey’s Ocean County to develop and demonstrate an accessible prototype of SWMIS using data from the Barneget Bay-Little Egg Harbor watershed. The goal is to provide a model that other coastal communities can use to promote enhanced coastal water quality through the improved watershed-scale management of stormwater.

CRSSA is a center of the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. For more information on this project, go to:  http://ciceet.unh.edu/living_coasts/projects/stormwater_information_system.html