Case Studies: Kinston Roof Project
Up on the (green) roof: The late Mike Regans, left, Bill Ellis, direc-tor of Parks and Recreation for Kinston and Lenoir County and Peg Godwin, Lenoir County Cooperative Extension horticulture agent, dis-play a tray of drought-tolerant, low-maintenance sedum plants in 2002. Staff photo
Eastern North Carolina’s first “green roof,” on the Neuseway Planetarium’s roof at Kinston’s riverside Neuseway Nature Center, rebounded like a soggy phoenix after its destruction by Hurricane Floyd’s floods.
NET members Bill Hunt, an extension biological and agricultural engineering specialist, and the late Mike Regans helped pioneer the 250-square-foot green roof project in 2002, and made sure it was reconstructed after the storm.
The research was too important to abandon just because of a little bad weather.
Regans said he hoped the green roof would decrease N levels in the stormwater runoff that empties from the roof into the Neuse River, now first flowing along the way through research sampling sites.
Due to the weight a green roof must carry, NET members had to choose rooftop plants carefully, using sedum, native to arid Afghanistan and Turkey. “We can’t have a plant that needs too much water because the water adds weight to the rooftop,” Hunt said, “which means you have to make the roof stronger and that adds to your cost. In fact, this roof at first will be something just to look at. It’s not designed for foot traffic.”
NET and NC Cooperative Extension collaborated on the rooftop stormwater project with Kinston’s Engineering Department and the Kinston/Lenoir County Parks and Recreation Department.
—Art Latham
