Shoes soaked. Socks wet. Squelching your way to class. There is almost nothing worse at Tulane University than trying to cross Freret and Willow Streets when it is raining. And it is always raining. On average, the U.S. receives 30 inches of rain in a year. Compare that to New Orleans, which receives 62 inches of rain a year. As all this water runs off buildings, sidewalks and quads all around campus, it drains to the lowest elevation it can get to, usually sidewalks and streets. But flooding like this can have much more serious consequences than preventing people from crossing a street. Just 6 inches of moving water can knock someone off of their feet. Stagnant water can conceal downed electrical lines, hazardous waste, sharp objects and contaminates. As more and more of campus becomes paved and built over, more runoff is created and more street flooding is likely to occur. Yet, Tulane continues to construct three new buildings, with two more on the way.  

What is the university doing about stormwater management? It is not a rhetorical question. The university has released no statement about storm management on campus. Besides drains, the only visible stormwater management on campus are the rain gardens that Tulane built near the Boggs Center for Energy and Biotechnology and the new residence halls, but the university has released no information about how effective they are. 

If you were to look up Tulane and stormwater management, like I have, you would find that Tulane actually does a lot of stormwater management… off campus. In Gentilly and Jefferson Parish, Tulane has partnered with local organizations to help support their efforts to manage stormwater. On campus, it is a different story. Apart from the rain gardens, the last plans for stormwater management on campus was released in 2016. Whatever mitigation efforts might or might not be in place are clearly not enough. The roads still flood, and water pools on the sidewalk every time it rains.  

Tulane has an obligation to its students, staff and neighbors to put more effort into stormwater management and transparency. A couple of rain gardens are not enough to manage the amount of rain that falls on campus, especially not with all new buildings. The current amount of flooding is more than annoying. It is hazardous and results in inaccessibility. The least the university can do is let us know what they are doing and consider stormwater management in their planning. Some measures the University of Tennessee and the University of Southern Mississippi have implemented include publishing information about how they deal with runoff annually, providing a place for students to report stormwater management issues and creating comprehensive plans that community members can comment on. When information about stormwater management is made public, we have more power to change it. Maybe then we can at least cross the street.