News / August 27, 2015

New Stormwater Park and Learning Center Demonstrates Sustainable Development, Green Infrastructure

The MWMO Stormwater Park and Learning Center, as seen from the Lowry Avenue Bridge.

Public invited to see their new ‘backyard on the Mississippi River’

MINNEAPOLIS — The Mississippi Watershed Management Organization invites the public to celebrate the completion of its one-of-a-kind Stormwater Park and Learning Center on Saturday, Sept. 19.

The family-friendly grand opening celebration from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. will feature tours, interactive displays and exhibits, and kids’ activities. The event will mark the completion of the MWMO’s public park and facility, which serves as a showcase of landscape features that save, clean and reuse stormwater.

“We have built a beautiful green space for people to enjoy — but more importantly, it’s a place where people can see what green infrastructure looks like and how simple features like rain gardens and tree trenches protect our natural resources,” said MWMO Executive Director Doug Snyder.

The park is built around 11 unique, visible stormwater management features. Highlights include a green roof, a 4,500-gallon cistern, large rain gardens with native prairie vegetation and a special experiment station to test different soil mixtures for filtering stormwater.

“Not a drop of water that falls on our site runs off into the river,” Snyder said. “Our stormwater treatment train can absorb and clean up to seven inches of stormwater runoff in a single day from our site and the surrounding area.”

The MWMO’s building, which hosts many energy and water-saving technologies, has been upgraded with a number of educational and interpretive features to teach the public how stormwater runoff pollutes water.

The opening of the Stormwater Park and Learning Center involved removing nearly 18,000 tons of contaminated soil and restoring a piece of riverbank to a natural, sustainable state. The project won a Minnesota Brownfields ReScape Award and provides a new public access point to the Mississippi River.

Visitors will also have the opportunity to see the Minneapolis Satellite Reef, part of the worldwide Crochet Coral Project created by the Institute For Figuring, in partnership with the Minneapolis Institute of Art.