New Stormwater Infiltration System at Bemidji State Under Construction

A major construction project at the entrance of Bemidji State University has been catching attention over the past week, as a giant dirt pile has been growing by the day. Now nearly as tall as the lights at the nearby baseball field, the pile is the result of the installation of a new stormwater infiltration system.

BSU, the City of Bemidji, and the Beltrami Soil & Water Conservation District have teamed up on the $500,000 endeavor, which will redirect up to several inches of rainwater away from Lake Bemidji. The hope of the project is to create a better living environment for the area’s aquatic plants and wildlife.

“What it does is it takes all of the adjacent stormwater from all of the roads, parking lots, sidewalks, and currently is going down a pipe to Lake Bemidji, and it will be dispersed down into the ground,” explained Travis Barnes, BSU’s facilities director.

“[This project] is designed to reduce about 60 pounds of phosphorus a year from entering Lake Bemidji, which is about 25% of our 10-year goal,” said Brent Rud, director of environmental services for Beltrami County.

The construction will displace 224,000 cubic feet of dirt from a 200-by-80-foot hole that’s 14 feet deep. The new drainage and filtration systems are entirely underground, so once the project is finished, the BSU field will go back to looking like it previously did.

Rud continued, “There’s a pipe that drains this 92 acres. It collects in curb and gutter, and it goes into a stormwater pipe. And that pipe actually conveys the stormwater out into Lake Bemidji. So it goes underneath the buildings on BSU’s campus here and goes out to Diamond Point Park. What we’re doing is intercepting that pipe, installing this underground infiltration system, and then the overflow is going to re-enter that same piping system that exists and continue on to Diamond Point.”

The project is set to be finished near the end of June.