NEMO

Bringing Some Green to Our Big Cities

When people think of Hartford and New Haven, “green” may not be the first thing that jumps to mind. However, recent efforts of the UConn Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO) program are helping to make these cities a little bit greener, both figuratively and literally. This past June, NEMO partnered with Neighborhood Housing Services […]

Green Infrastructure on the UConn Campus

May 13, 2014 Presented by Michael Dietz & Chet Arnold, UConn CLEAR The main campus of the University of Connecticut is rapidly becoming a showcase for the innovative stormwater practices known as green infrastructure (GI), or low impact development (LID). Green roofs, rain gardens, pervious parking lots and walkways, bioretention cells, and other GI features […]

A Congressman Supports Infiltration: of Stormwater, that is…

On Tuesday April 14th, Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut’s Second District stopped by UConn for a brief tour of low impact development (LID), or green infrastructure (GI), stormwater practices on campus.   The Congressman and his aide Cutter Oliver were doing some fact finding related to a bill introduced to the House last year, the […]

Water Please, Hold the Pharmaceuticals

The medicines that we all take are prescribed with the goal of improving our health in some way. Unfortunately, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals that we use are finding their way into our nation’s waterways, impacting aquatic life, and potentially threatening our health. There are two ways medications are finding their way into our water bodies, […]

LID vs Green Infrastructure

If you deal with stormwater issues or land use planning, chances are you have heard the phrase “green infrastructure” mentioned a lot recently. It is rapidly replacing “Low Impact Development” (LID) as the phrase du jour in the stormwater biz. But before we all go willingly adopting this into our lexicon, we must first ask […]

Green Roofs Blossom in America’s Cities

City parks and stock exchanges are not the only place to find large expanses of green these days.  Green roofs are starting to become part of the cityscape in many of the larger cities on both the East and West coasts.  The reason?  Green roofs provide a host of environmental benefits:  they increase energy efficiency, […]

A Watershed Moment

Many of us have heard about watershed protection efforts. Perhaps you live in a drinking water supply watershed. Poor Willy Wonka was wrongly accused of poisoning the watershed of his brown river (it turned out to be chocolate).  But what is a watershed, really? In physical terms, a watershed is an area of land that […]

Of Witch Hazel and Wood Frogs

Here at CLEAR I don’t think anyone would claim to be a naturalist, at least of any skill or repute.  But that doesn’t prevent our collective and individual enjoyment of the natural world, including the signal events that mark the turning of the seasons. For me (forgive me, crocus fans), there are really three signature […]

The Salt of the Earth

Although signs of spring are appearing around us (crocuses are up at my house!), the remnants of winter linger. Piles of dirty snow snow still litter the landscape, refusing to yield to the lengthening days. Very soon our thoughts and activities will turn to all things spring; snowplows and road salt will be distant memories. […]

Build a Rain Garden this Spring with NEMO’s New App & Website

February 20, 2013 Presented by David Dickson & Michael Dietz, UConn CLEAR Rain gardens are depressions in the ground that collect and soak up stormwater runoff from roads, roofs, driveways, and other hard surfaces. They are relatively simple to install, are beautiful additions to the landscape, and help prevent water pollution. And now NEMO has […]

Dietz Gets Sappy About Water

It’s funny sometimes how seemingly unrelated events help to congeal an idea in your head (or in my case remind you of an idea that you had thought about before, and then forgotten…I am 40 after all!). Earlier this week I finally checked out the NPR story  that Don Waye from EPA had sent, that […]

NEMO Monitoring Project Looks at Nitrogen Processing by Bioretention

Last week CLEAR’s NEMO Program broke ground on a new monitoring project focused on the Low Impact Development (LID) practice of bioretention.  Bioretention is the practice of reducing the quantity, and increasing the quality, of runoff by directing it to a depression filled with plants.  This is the same concept as the more widely recognized rain garden, […]

Rain Garden App Coming Soon!

Several CLEAR programs (o.k., since you asked, it’s the CT NEMO, National NEMO Network, and the Geospatial Training Programs) have teamed up to develop a “rain garden” app for smart phones.  A rain garden is a vegetated depression that accepts and infiltrates runoff from a rooftop, driveway of other impervious surface.  Unlike many  “Low Impact […]

NEMO’s Rain Garden Demonstration Site

The NEMO team has just completed its second rain garden demonstration site at the Middlesex County Extension Center in Haddam (CLEAR and NEMO’s home-base). Rain gardens are shallow depressions in the landscape that typically include plants and a mulch layer or ground cover. Their purpose is to help retain water runoff during a storm event, allowing […]