Can Greening a City Reduce Stormwater AND Improve Quality of Life?
There has been alot of talk about “green infrastructure” over the past couple of years–and communities all across the nation are slowly bmoving towards this more natural approach.
From USEPA:
Green infrastructure is an approach to wet weather management that is cost-effective, sustainable, and environmentally friendly. Green Infrastructure management approaches and technologies infiltrate, evapotranspire, capture and reuse stormwater to maintain or restore natural hydrologies.
At the largest scale, the preservation and restoration of natural landscape features (such as forests, floodplains and wetlands) are critical components of green stormwater infrastructure. By protecting these ecologically sensitive areas, communities can improve water quality while providing wildlife habitat and opportunities for outdoor recreation.
On a smaller scale, green infrastructure practices include rain gardens, porous pavements, green roofs, infiltration planters, trees and tree boxes, and rainwater harvesting for non-potable uses such as toilet flushing and landscape irrigation.
In Pennsylvania, these ideas are starting to take hold–and the Philadelphia Water Department is at the forefront of using green solutions to meet the challenges presented by rain. The Philadelphia Art Museum’s new Parking lot features a green roof and other landscape features to control runoff, and the Water Department has started phasing in a new parcel based fee structure that encourages landowners to manage runoff on their properties rather than shunt it to the nearest sewers. The Inquirer looks at the city’s plan in an article published today.
EPA’s Managing Wet Weather with Green Infrastructure website is a great resource to learn more.
So are we: Stormwater PA is in the process of developing a series of video case studies that look at green infrastructure, so keep checking back; they’ll be available soon!
