Authors: Tsz Wai Wong, LARCP; Conner Bruns, LARCP; Kelsey McDonough, BAE; Erica Schmitz, BAE; Joseph Weeks, Agronomy; & Joe Krauska, Entomology
Project Title: Stronger Quinlan
Professor: Lee Skabelund, LARCP & Trisha Moore, BAE
Project Description: Situated at the downstream end of the Campus Creek Corridor, the Quinlan Natural Area has greeted Kansas State University students and faculty walking to class for more than five decades. Decorated with natural seating areas and native tree species, this tribute to the University’s first landscape architect is falling into a state of disrepair. Development upstream to the north in the Strong Complex has created a vast impermeable watershed that generates large volumes of stormwater runoff during precipitation events that quickly exceed Campus Creek’s effective capacity. The result has been poor stream water quality and frequent flash flooding in the Quinlan Natural Area as well as the eastern residential portion of the City of Manhattan, Kansas. The “Stronger Quinlan” project is designed to disconnect the Strong Complex watershed from Campus Creek by capturing and infiltrating stormwater runoff at the source as a first step in alleviating the flooding issue. Since a significant portion of the impervious area is comprised of building roofs, the proposed design utilizes three cisterns to rapidly collect stormwater as it falls and then slowly release the stored water over a 48-hour span to a bioretention cell/detention basin system, which promotes onsite infiltration for groundwater recharge. Before reaching the bioretention cell, water will flow through an eco-revelatory plaza bisecting a main pedestrian thoroughfare to engage users in the hydrologic process. Currently, more than 24,000 people interact with the site on an annual basis making the site location particularly attractive to demonstrate the value of green infrastructure.
