Melissa Nolan moved from Detroit, Michigan to live in eastern North Carolina, where she is now pursuing her Master’s degree at ECU in Environmental Health and Safety. She credits her cross-country move to ECU’s reputable Environmental Health and Safety program. She spent much of her childhood exploring the Great Lakes area and appreciating the northern wetlands before she attended Eastern Michigan University where she earned her undergraduate degree and became a teacher. Working with children in the community influenced her to make the switch to environmental health,“…right by my students’ homes there was an electroplating company that was dumping toxic waste in the basement and so that toxic waste ended up going through a drainpipe and literal green ooze was spilling out on the expressway. It went under my students’ back yards and it got me concerned and, of course, I think back to the Flint water crisis…and the health of the children.” Nolan is determined to use her education as a means to advocate for improved water quality for others and hopes that her thesis research will help our communities avoid flooding and water quality related issues.
Wetland restoration is the focus of Nolan’s thesis research; she is studying ways to improve upon stormwater management practices in places like the coastal plain of NC to decrease the number of urban flooding events and their severity. A dry detention basin is an intentionally low spot created to collect and treat runoff from adjacent urban properties and to act as a storage place for water to collect rather than flooding local properties during precipitation events. Nolan is assessing the water movement and quality characteristics of one such basin that is not functioning as intended. “Since August I’ve been collecting storm data, that includes flow measurements, microbe samples, contaminant and pollutant samples as well,” Working alongside Nolan on this project are ECU professors Dr. Humphrey and Dr. Iverson. The team is working to improve water quality in the area by monitoring and altering the existing structure, “I’m just collecting the pre-data now before the retrofit for when they do turn it into a beautiful, meandering wetland area.” The preliminary data collected will be used in determining what alterations need to be made to the system and as a point of comparison for water quantity and quality data collected after modifications have been completed.
Want to learn more about her story, click here to listen to our podcast interview with Melissa!
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