Green Infrastructure - A Bridge Made of Pickles?

Posted on April 30, 2007 | Filed Under Clean Water, Green Infrastructure, Healthy Waters, Rain Gardens 

baerKatherine Baer, Director
Healthy Waters Campaign

I’m familiar with green roofs, but the other day I heard someone talk about a green wall! And no, these are not buildings made of salad, but creative design and building techniques that integrate the natural environment into the built environment, making people and our environment better off. This use of green infrastructure is really taking off as the multiple benefits - from reducing polluted runoff and greenhouse gases to providing community green space - of these techniques and planning approaches become clear.

roof_img_milwaukee MSD Boston just announced plans to go green by planting 100,000 trees in areas around the City, citing the multiple benefits of trees including cleaner water and keeping the city cooler. Cities around the country from Portland, Oregon to Chicago to Philadelphia have recognized the multiple benefits of integrating the natural landscape as part of City design to create healthier and more attractive communities.

By preserving natural landscape features like buffers and floodplains and restoring and mimicking others through use of low impact development techniques like rain gardens, green roofs, tree boxes, and other techniques that use native vegetation, we can rely on green infrastructure in the same way we rely on built infrastructure like bridges and roads. NRDC’s report Rooftop to Rivers explains how green infrastructure can be used to reduce sewer overflows, sometimes more cheaply than typical hard engineering fixes. Our work on low impact development demonstrates how using the natural landscape is an excellent way to reduce stormwater and flooding.

Now EPA is also getting in the act, recently signing a statement of support for green infrastructure and promising to integrate these concepts and techniques across their permitting and enforcement programs. We’ll be working with the Agency to see this through - so maybe a street made of peas is in your future….

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Comments

2 Responses to “Green Infrastructure - A Bridge Made of Pickles?”

  1. Serena on May 1st, 2007 9:55 am

    Good Magazine (you should check it out, if you haven’t) has a nice piece on green walls.

  2. Green Roof Pushers : American Rivers Blog on May 17th, 2007 5:05 pm

    [...] good buddy Katherine talks about this a little more in one of her posts.  If you want to learn more about green roofs, beyond greenroofs.com, check out this page from the [...]

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