CASE STUDY

Restoring Former Industrial Land to Benefit Nature & Community

Working with its parent, the Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) under a services agreement, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) wanted to redevelop land previously used as a tank storage facility and a coal-fired power plant.

UCC West Virginia Operationsis located on the Kanawha River and adjacent to West Virginia State University.

The 47-acre parcel is adjacent to the Kanawha River and is divided by two smaller streams that flow into the river. UCC’s goals were to redevelop the area as a greenbelt to meet all regulatory requirements by delivering rainwater via sheet flow (overland flow that is not in any defined channels) to the streams, while also helping to control erosion and improve overall aesthetics for the community.

The company needed to evaluate redevelopment alternatives that would meet these goals in a cost-effective manner.

A team from Dow, The Nature Conservancy and EcoMetrix Solutions Group used the precursor to EI, the ESII Tool, to collect ecological data and get results for the baseline condition.

These results helped to inform three redevelopment options for the site and UCC, which were then compared.

  • Standard redevelopment: clear the engineered infrastructure and plant a lawn

  • Option A - Basic sustainable landscaping: plant native plants and grasses

  • Option B - Enhanced sustainable landscaping: use a combination of native plants, grasses, shrubs and trees as ground cover and restoration of the stream; the trees would also provide visual screening.

These alternatives were designed to deliver a priority set of ecosystem services: water provisioning, water quality control (including removal of total suspended solids and nitrogen), erosion control, and visual aesthetics.

Key Findings

The assessment showed that Option B provided a higher level of performance than the standard redevelopment option for 5 of 6 priority ecosystem services; Option A provided higher performance for 3 of 6 of these services (Fig. 2 and Table 1). Using these data as input for a cost analysis showed that Option A was cost-competitive with the standard redevelopment option, while Option B was 25% more expensive due to stream restoration costs. However, both Option A and B were more cost-competitive when benefits to nature and the community were included.

Figure 2. Ecosystem service percent performance for the priority ecosystem services under baseline conditions and each alternative redevelopment design (WQ= water quality).

Table 1. Ecosystem services in engineering units of measure for the priority ecosystem services under baseline conditions and each alternative redevelopment design.

By using the modeling tools, UCC was able to achieve the goals identified at the onset of the project while also enhancing nature for roughly the same net present value.

The analysis facilitated and inspired UCC’s design team to develop a cost competitive alternative built around the benefits offered by sustainable landscaping principles.

In other words, the team learned that spending slightly more for enhanced plantings and restoration leads to greater ecosystem services and benefits to UCC and the surrounding community while significantly reducing maintenance and operational costs over the life of the project.

As a result of this project, UCC’s civil engineering group is considering embedding sustainable landscaping practices where appropriate.