Quality of Life

It is clear that stormwater has had an increasingly negative impact on water resources as our population has grown. The demand for new housing, roads, shopping centers, industrial facilities, parking lots, and other structures and infrastructure will continue to change hundreds of thousands of acres of natural landscape every year—and this will not only increase this impact, but affect our natural and communities for generations to come.

Smart Growth, Low Impact Development, and Watershed Planning are but a few of the methods being utilized to ensure that the developments we undertake today minimize our short term impacts, as well as the implications on the generations to come. Incorporating comprehensive stormwater management approaches into such programs can significantly improve the quality of life on a specific site, within a given community, and throughout a region.

Clean, healthy waterways provide a range of recreational opportunities, from swimming and rafting to fishing, bird watching, or simply enjoying a day at the beach. These essential activities make for healthier individuals, nurture the human spirit, and benefit local economies.

Given a choice, who would not prefer the visually attractive, character giving qualities of a diversely vegetated landscape over one that is graded and paved? Besides providing beauty and color, vegetation helps counter the “heat island effect” in which heat from the sun is absorbed by hardened (and often dark-colored) surfaces. In contrast to impervious areas which release heat more slowly, trees provide a cooling effect. Vegetation also improves air quality by slowing the formation of ozone, releasing oxygen, and storing carbon which can slow global warming.