January 11, 2023

A University team consisting of Brodie Dunn and Lisa Merrifield (Extension), Linda Derhak (DURP student), and Stacy Gloss met with Lacey Rains Lowe and Jeff Marino from the City of Champaign to talk about working together to coordinate rainwater management efforts. Champaign sees a gap in resources for commercial developers related to innovative stormwater management applications. The team identified stormwater utility fee incentives as a possible leverage point for developers, but current incentives do not seem to be sufficient. Linda will begin to inventory cities with stormwater utility fees for innovative practices for engaging commercial developers. Brodie will propose revisions to the approved plant and tree list for Champaign to encourage use of native and more beneficial non-native plant species. Lisa will reach out to planners from Urbana and Savoy and will schedule a meeting for mid-February to discuss progress and identify next steps.

The Resilience iCAP Team had its first online meeting of the year on Friday, September 9th from 2:00 - 3:00 PM. The team reviewed the Resilience Charge Letter, talked about ground rules of the team, reviewed seven Resilience iCAP objectives, and shared updates on each objective. Meeting minutes and ground rules documents are attached. 

Stacy Gloss attended the Urban Stormwater Working Group meeting on 4/19/22 led by Lisa Merrifield.

Agenda item 1) An Illinois Green Infrastructure Inventory Update was provided.

Key points:

• Tracking Best Management Practices:  need to know: where, what, how much, and when
• Detailed information allows for comparison between practices
• Practices include projects like:  vegetated filter strips, grass swale, infiltration devices, permeable pavement, porous pavement, wetland detention, dry detention, settling basin, bio-swale, grass swale, wet pond, constructed wetland, green roof, weekly street sweeping, native landscaping, stormwater tree, sand filters, settling basin, WQ inlets, wet ponds, infiltration devices, concrete grid  pavement, sand filter/infiltration basin, oil/grit separator etc. Also new construction and retrofit.
• Next steps: testing data-sets with NCSA

Agenda item 2) meeting participants described their work and current projects.

Update: May 9, 2022

Stacy Gloss and Eliana Brown will attend the September MS4 meeting to describe projects related to capturing green infrastructure project locations and project information to share best practices with the local community. Campus maintains data about about green infrastructure projects on campus. A pilot project is underway to share green infrastructure project data with communities across Illinois.  Eliana Brown is involved in this effort and NCSA is developing a database platform for information sharing.

Stacy Gloss will attend the next MS4 meeting in June also.

10/25/2021 11:00 am

Present: Brent Lewis, Betsy Liggett, Lisa Merrifield, Stacy Gloss

Updates from Stacy:

• Resilience team identified a next step on the iCAP objective review slides: “Resilience team to recommend campus to initiate an engineered rainwater master plan”
• NGICP training for 4 F&S staff submitted to SSC as step-1 application
• Stacy attended the GI conference Oct 20

Updates from Lisa and Betsy:

• Extension receiving funds to create state-wide GI reporting platform, working with NCSA
• Lisa is hiring an Academic Hourly intern to work through summer 2022 for the biodiversity plan - this work is complementary to coordinated rainwater management plans and so this staff person may be able to work on planning objectives for coordinated rainwater management plans.
• Lisa is recruiting someone with planning / engineering background to work on GI or biodiversity this summer.

Coordinated Rainwater Plan

We discussed the fit for Extension to be involved in coordinating rainwater management plans for our urbanized areas and campus. We brainstormed ideas on how coordination can take place, who should be involved, and started thinking about special topics to address.

Green Infrastructure Mapping

Work together with Extension and NCSA on the GI platform for Illinois. This work is starting soon.

Next Steps

• Follow up and plan to meet in December or January.   
• Define rainwater management plan 
• Define objectives for a rainwater management plan
• Describe process for achieving those objectives
• Attend planning meetings with Extension on GI platform & mapping

A team of researchers will be measuring the impact of natural vegetation at the Solar Farm 2.0 grounds. Below the 31,122 bi-facial solar panels lie 54 acres perfect for pollinator-friendly plantings.

But how exactly does one calculate the plants’ effectiveness? How about: count the bugs.

Ben Campbell, an energy engineer at the University of Illinois Chicago, is part of a research effort that will do exactly that, and more. Their research will also address other matters at Solar Farm 2.0, including how the pollinator plants affect the efficiency of the solar panels’ power production, and how quickly and strongly the pollinator plantings grow.

Additionally, F&S Utilities & Energy Services are a support team member for the research project which will study the economic and ecological benefits of planting native and other flowering plants under and around solar arrays. In order to count the bugs, a few times a year researchers will catch flying insects over the course of a day. The insects they collect will be taken to the Bee Research Facility on the Urbana campus where they will be identified and archived, under the guidance of Dr. Adam Dolezal.

This might seem standard practice for a new test site with new plantings. What may surprise the reader is another research question: where and how many birds and bats will come around for feeding time?

“The research is driven by the solar industry’s questions about the colocation of solar power production and pollinator habitat,” said Campbell. “Our research seeks to understand what scale of habitat is necessary to have measurable impacts on pollinator, bird, and bat populations at utility-scale solar facilities, in addition to benefits in terms of increased power production or lifecycle costs of managing vegetation. We are excited to have the opportunity to test these questions in our own backyard at Solar Farm 2.0.”

Using acoustic and ultrasonic recorders, the team will record bird and bat abundance and diversity, respectively, over time, measuring wildlife elements until at least 2023.

The research project, led by Iris Caldwell at the Energy Resources Center at University of Illinois Chicago, is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technology Office. Her research team consists of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, UIC, the Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Six solar facility test sites have been selected for field research across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This includes the 12 MW Solar Farm 2.0 facility at UIUC. In partnership with F&S and Sol Systems (the site operator) the research team will evaluate the effects of the pollinator plantings on photovoltaic and ecological performance and compare operational costs with facilities that use conventional ground cover (usually turf grass). In addition, Solar Farm 1.0 may be used as a control site for comparison for performance and pollinator observation.