Protecting the Puget Sound from stormwater runoff

By Rob Carson, Tacoma News Tribune 
 
TACOMA – Grinning like a proud father, John Stark upends the five-gallon bucket he’s been carrying and splashes water onto the parking lot, inadvertently giving his cowboy boots a good soaking.

The pavement at the WSU Puyallup Research & Extension Center looks about like any other slab of concrete, but instead of running for the nearest drain, the water disappears almost instantly, as if Stark had poured it onto a bed of dry gravel. Stark is director of the research center and a professor of ecotoxicology, specializing in ecological risk assessment.

The concrete is designed so water flows through it and into the ground beneath. It’s part of a $1 million stormwater research effort in Puyallup that Stark believes will help revolutionize urban development and, in the process, save Puget Sound from death by poisoning.

For the complete article, click the following link to the Tacoma News Tribune
Click the following link for more information about John Stark.
 
 
Excerpt printed with permission from the Tacoma News Tribune.