Providing Stormwater Education and Outreach to Underserved Communities

This project in the Black Belt region of Alabama aims to enhance water quality by providing tailored training and educational resources to stormwater professionals and community members. Through hands-on workshops and outreach materials, the project targets 47 Census tracts across 17 counties, addressing both environmental concerns, such as erosion and stormwater pollution, and socioeconomic challenges stemming from population migration and economic disparities in the area.

Full Abstract: This project aims to provide training and educational resources to stormwater professionals and community members residing in the Black Belt region of Alabama to improve water quality from construction runoff sources. This project additionally focuses on The Poarch Band of Creek Indians residing on the outside edge of the Black Belt region to provide training for their stormwater needs. This project includes hands-on training workshops and outreach resources such as instructional videos and infographics.
This project seeks to fill the gap between researchers and practitioners through developing training specific to on-site needs. The needs of professionals in the service area have been assessed through a state of the practice survey as well as interviews with various county engineers. Feedback from the survey as well as the interviews has provided valuable insight on how to best create and deliver educational outreach to community members. The service area includes 47 individual U.S. Census Bureau tracts in 17 counties within the Black Belt Region of Alabama. There has been a population migration out of the area due to a lack of opportunities. In fact, populations in the service area are less than 2,500 and have median household incomes well below 80% of the State Nonmetropolitan Median Household Income. In addition to socioeconomic disadvantages within the service area, there are also environmental concerns. Alabama is highly vulnerable to erosion and is at high risk for construction stormwater pollution due to the heavy rainfall and erosive soils. The Black Belt region of Alabama had highly fertile soil that led to cotton production, and due to the heavy production of cotton, the topsoil is now depleted which compounds flooding and pooling effects. Overall, the project has a goal of developing trainings that target these specific needs through working with practitioners and utilizing successful implementations of technology transfer done in other parts of the country.