NYC's Queensborough Community College Gets Grant to Make Parking Area More Eco-Friendly
May 16, 2012 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis Queensborough Community College has been selected to receive up to $1 million in funding through New York State’s Green Innovation Grant Program to reconstruct its largest parking lot on campus, replacing hard asphalt with porous asphalt and creating two planted areas (called bioswales) to retain rain water and filter pollutants.
Queensborough Community College. Photo courtesy of top-schools.tk.
The bioswales will also give the campus a beautiful green appearance by creating a new tree-lined pedestrian entrance – linking the main gate and the main quadrangle.
The grant program’s purpose is to develop green infrastructure with the goal of managing rainwater where it falls, reducing runoff, and treating it.
If left unmanaged, researchers with the grant program says that, “Stormwater runoff can overwhelm sewer systems and other clean-water infrastructures, leading to pollution of our waterways,” adding that, “Working in parallel with traditional grey, clean-water infrastructure, green infrastructure is a cost-effective and efficient tool for meeting the goals of the Clean Water Act.”
Queensborough College says its new bioswales are expected cause a reduction of up to 4 million gallons of storm water runoff per year, which currently flows through the storm sewer directly into the Alley Creek wetlands and Little Neck Bay – part of Long Island Sound.
Before this new grant, the college also received one from Coulomb Technologies, Inc. that was used to install two electric charging stations on campus that now power the campus’ fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles.