Camille Nitsch: A Lab Chemist Engineering Stormwater Solutions

Meet Camille. Camille Nitsch is a student at Marquette University specializing in environmental engineering.

She and fellow Marquette student Joe Branca visit Green Tech Station as a field site for an ongoing experiment considering how the media in bioswales can be optimized to remove dissolved phosphorus and nitrogen from urban stormwater. This work is important because excess nutrients, which runs off the land from various sources including lawn fertilizer, can contribute to harmful algal blooms or other ecologically harmful effects in receiving waters. For us in Milwaukee, managing nutrients like phosphorus ultimately means a healthier Lake Michigan.

Marquette has built an array of “mesocosms” in sealed white plastic barrels containing mixtures of soil, sand, and compost—plus special amendments that retain moisture to increase microbial nitrogen update and coal slag to react with dissolved phosphorus. These barrels are housed at Green Tech Station next to the test plaza, where they are exposed to controlled amounts of “synthetic stormwater.” The barrels have sampling devices attached that allow the Marquette team to measure how well different mixtures perform.

The object of the experiment is to quantify the performance of the various mesocosms in order to inform the best designs for larger-scale systems like urban bioswales or other green infrastructure.

If a certain mixture is best at capturing and removing phosphorus from stormwater, for example, this would be good to know for engineers designing systems to meet water-quality goals like those in agreements known as TMDLs (water nerd jargon for total maximum daily loads). There is a TMDL for the Milwaukee River Basin that sets a limit for total phosphorus in the water. We know bioswales should help manage nutrient pollution, but Marquette’s research is important because it promises to quantify how a specific combination of factors makes a measurable difference with a contaminant of concern. The knowledge gained can help define different tools in the portfolio of strategies to meet water quality goals under the TMDL.

Camille works mainly in the lab. She prepares the synthetic stormwater applied to the mesocosms by mixing tap water with a solution of potassium chloride. She also studies the water chemistry of control systems smaller than the mesocosms so the Marquette team has an idea of what to expect in the field.

Camille attended an engineering magnet high school and is a highly motivated undergraduate passionate about doing scientific work. Helping to make a difference one environment at a time is the kind of work she wants to pursue. “I'm driven because there are not a lot of women in STEM,” she says. “I wanted to show that anything is possible.”