Project Description
The California Natural Resources Agency provided the City of La Mesa, located in Southern California, a $2.3M grant to remove and replace approximately 4,500 feet of asphalt and concrete roadway median. The roadway median was replaced with bio-retention areas that would assist in infiltrating and filtering urban water runoff. Utilizing local bioretention systems, both traditional and enhanced, RICK was able to meet environmental stormwater runoff standards to eliminate harmful and unnecessary sediments. Not only do the bioretention systems successfully remove pollutants from storm water before draining into public waterways, but the systems does so in an environmentally friendly way while maintaining and promoting the city’s natural landscape.
This type of infrastructure improvement requires an array of RICK specialties, ranging across landscape architects, geotechnical specialists, water resources specialists, and civil engineers. The project includes, but is not limited to landscape design, preparation of landscape construction documents, preparation of technical specifications for the bio-retention basins, and final cost estimations lending to the bidding process. This project demonstrates pioneering trends in landscape architecture and an exceptional capability to proactively achieve current stormwater quality treatment goals, as evidenced by the University Avenue Median Water Quality Improvements Project receiving an award from the American Society of Landscape Architects.