Smart Stormwater: Frog Creek Partners Powers a Cleaner Crow Creek with Gutter Bin Innovation

At present, it’s our feet that are in the gutter. We are all gathered around Brian Deurloo, the Founder and CEO of Frog Creek Partnerships, on the edge of Union Depot Plaza in Cheyenne, WY. Frog Creek designs, manufactures, and installs stormwater filters, the most well-known of which is Gutter Bin stormwater filtration products.  

As his crew carefully lever up the existing grate, Deurloo explains how Gutter Bins can have immense downstream impacts. They can be installed in existing storm drains and catch pollutants at the street level before they reach creeks and other waterways. Equipped with a debris-catching filter known as a Mundus bag, Gutter Bins collect solid litter as well as sediments and hydrocarbons from stormwater runoff.

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The installation is done in less than fifteen minutes, and Deurloo’s team quickly packs up to move on to the next site – they have over 100 installations scheduled over the next few days. Funded by Microsoft, this installation project will add 127 Gutter Bins across the city (67 were installed in 2020) and will prevent an estimated 10 tons of pollution from reaching Cheyenne’s Crow Creek each year.  

Leveling up with Sensing Capabilities and the Internet of Things

According to Deurloo, Frog Creek Partners’ mission is to “protect and restore rivers and oceans around the planet, one storm drain at a time.”  Deurloo and Frog Creek Partners were recently awarded a significant grant from the NSF ASCEND Engine in Colorado and Wyoming for a project titled Creek Protection Partnership & Stormwater Filter Innovation.

“The Crow Creek protection partnership is a collaborative effort between government, private companies, nonprofits, and government entities to come together and help protect the Crow Creek Watershed right here in Cheyenne, Wyoming,” explains Deurloo. Should it all go to plan, the work Frog Creek Partners is doing along a 12-mile stretch of Crow Creek will stop ten tons or more of pollution from entering the waterway each year.

Initially, Gutter Bins were designed to function strictly as filters, but with the NSF ASCEND grant, Deurloo sees a clear path to level up the filter’s capabilities. “The grant is an opportunity for us to make a smart filter. I want to incorporate the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI into the whole system so that stormwater managers can make smart decisions,” he tells us.  

As part of the grant, Deurloo plans to work with scientists and engineers from The Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University’s Hydraulics Lab, and industry partners to develop sensors for Gutter Bins that can measure total suspended solids, inflow and outflow rates, electrical conductivity, temperature, and acidity/basicity. Linked by a network, these sensors will then be able to aggregate data into usable metrics allowing stormwater managers to quickly recognize upstream problems, identify potential efficiencies, and make decisions in real-time. The transition from passive filtration to active data capture with the new sensors and IoT functionality will position Frog Creek Partners to enter the smart infrastructure market.

Once the new filters are ready, Frog Creek has plans to coordinate with the Laramie County Conservation District and the City of Cheyenne for testing. “The City of Cheyenne has the opportunity to become a leader in water quality innovation if it successfully implements the Gutter Bin project with incorporated IoT and decision support,” says Deurloo. The hope is that the sensors will help stormwater managers identify sources of pollution before that pollution reaches the creek, an important step in prevention since 80% of the contaminants in rivers and oceans comes from parking lots, sidewalks and streets.  

Designed and manufactured in Wyoming

Deurloo shows us an earlier installation down the street. I can tell it was funded by the local Rotary Club because it has a bespoke logo on the access hatch. He then tells us which parts of Wyoming each part came from. The steel frames are cut in Sheridan, WY, and the custom storm grates are made in Gillette. Mundus bags are sewn in Frog Creek’s headquarters in Casper. Frog Creek Partners has also worked closely with local manufacturers through Manufacturing Works to research and organize in-house testing protocols and source local services.

As a former Oil and Gas worker, Deurloo understands the importance of local well-paying jobs. “I think it’s healthy for the state to branch out into other technologies, whether they be for energy production or environmental tech.”

Ron Gullberg, Strategic Partnerships Director for the Wyoming Business Council in Casper, agrees.

"Gutter Bins typify the efforts to grow and diversify Wyoming’s economy,” said Gullberg, who also attended the installation in Cheyenne. “Companies like this create the good jobs that keep families in the area."

Stormwater is Drinking Water

Several blocks away at the bottom of a small park, Deurloo shows us Crow Creek. “Stormwater is drinking water,” he says, “and right now Crow Creek is one of the most valuable resources Cheyenne has.”

As we draw closer, I can see crawdads and small fish swimming in the clear water. I also catch flashes of sunlight reflecting off of food wrappers tangled in the reeds, and cigarette butts floating in the water.  

Cigarette butts were actually what got Deurloo focused on water filtration. He was spurred to action after learning that a smoked cigarette butt, when placed into a liter of water with 10 minnows, will kill half those fish in four days. A statistic even more alarming, when one learns that cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world. Approximately 124 billion butts were littered in the United States in 2022, and by Deurloo’s estimation, 40 million of these are in Cheyenne.  

Deurloo started with the goal of picking up cigarette butts, but the more he learned the more his ambitions expanded. He learned that tire treads also contain chemicals that wear off on the streets and cause cancer in certain types of fish. And then there was sediment pollution, and hydrocarbons, and nutrients and phosphates.

“The Gulf of Mexico,” says Deurloo, pointing back the way we came, “starts in that parking lot right here. Rain will pick up the available pollutants and go directly from the parking lot through the storm drain and into Crow Creek. From here, the creek flows downstream to the South Platte River in Northern Colorado and joins up with the North Platte River. In Nebraska, it's going to flow down straight into Omaha, connect with the Missouri, and then into the Mississippi River.” A journey that will take water from this Cheyenne parking lot past 23 million people.

By focusing on the sources of pollution and combining local manufacturing, community collaboration, and cutting-edge sensing technology, the Crow Creek Protection Partnership is transforming stormwater management from a reactive chore into a proactive strategy. Each Gutter Bin installed, and every cigarette butt stopped ,improves the water quality for the 23 million people downstream and sets the stage for Cheyanne and Wyoming to become a national model for smart, resilient stormwater infrastructure.  

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