Bridgeland, a master-planned community from The Howard Hughes Corporation, recently received two awards for environmental and ecological sustainability. Both awards were related to Chrysalis Lake, a 65-acre habitat in the community’s Prairieland Village, designed to improve stormwater management and air quality and serve as a safe haven for local pollinators.

Chrysalis Lake received the Trailblazer Award from the Houston District Council of the Urban Land Institute, which cited the lake as setting “a bar not only for open space in master-planned communities, but also open spaces across our region” in a press release.

The lake also received Special Recognition from the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Parks and Natural Areas Awards, which honors local projects based on best practices and planning/implementation.

Chrysalis Lake includes eight bioswale flumes that cleanse approximately 29 million gallons of rainwater each year, removing 90% of pollutants before rereleasing the water back into the lake. The 22-acre body of water is surrounded by 39.5 acres of upland and bottomlands forests and meadows that are home to over 58,000 pollinator plants to combat the declining pollinator population in the region and increase native biodiversity.