Delta Institute and the City of Hobart, Indiana have implemented four GI installations throughout the city, including a courtyard rain garden at Hobart Middle School, a parking lot rain garden and permeable pavement in the front and backsides of Hobart City Hall, and a large bioswale in the city’s Hillman Park. These installations will collectively provide an additional 800,000 to 3.5 million gallons of stormwater management capacity.
With support from the U.S. Forest Service Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the Legacy Foundation, Delta Institute partnered with the City of Gary and Greenprint Partners to transform the once thriving site of the five-acre Bear Brand Hosiery Co. stocking factory into a park by planting hybrid poplar trees to improve soil quality.
Delta and Farmland LP partnered to create evaluation and assessment mechanisms to model the economic and environmental benefits of different scenarios to transition traditional commodity agricultural land to diverse, sustainable production models.
Delta Institute is working with our long-term partner, the Illinois International Port District to implement numerous activities and achieve goals as laid out in the Port’s 2030 Master Plan.
In 2016 Delta assisted the Green Lake Association (GLA) for Green Lake, Wisconsin, in developing an effective long-term approach to reducing phosphorus loading into the Green Lake watershed by leveraging existing research and tools, with a goal of demonstrable water quality improvement, watershed health, and sediment/nutrient reduction.
The Saginaw Bay Watershed Conservation Partnership, led by TNC with support from Delta and other partners, developed and implemented a new strategy to address the primary and secondary resource concerns in the region, particularly water quality degradation and inadequate fish and wildlife habitat.
Delta created a novel nitrous oxide carbon credit methodology that allowed producers to access carbon market revenue from reducing fertilizer application rates. Delta was able to deliver the first successful nitrous oxide reduction project on the voluntary carbon market. The project was highlighted by Agriculture Secretary Vilsack for its innovation and success.
Delta and LVEJO partnered to create recommendations to guide redevelopment of the Fisk and Crawford coal plants in Chicago under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel using just-transition principles created through authentic community engagement and outreach.
Delta Institute has long focused on deconstruction and waste reduction as ways to create a more economically vibrant Midwest. This focus led to the creation of the Rebuilding Exchange, a social venture that Delta spun off into it’s own separate organization.
Delta Institute collaborated with Winrock International and Sand County Foundation to create an innovative and comprehensive “How To Guide” for a new concept called “Pay for Performance,” a market-based incentive to pay farmers for documented improvements to water- and soil- quality as a result of conservation-focused agricultural practices.
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