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Green Infrastructure for Stormwater Control: Gauging its Effectiveness with Community Partners, Summary of EPA GI Reports
Citation:
Hopton, M. E., M. Simon, Mike Borst, A. S. Garmestani, T. Jarnagin, S. Jacobs, D. Lye, T. P. O'Connor, AND W. D. Shuster. Green Infrastructure for Stormwater Control: Gauging its Effectiveness with Community Partners, Summary of EPA GI Reports. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-15/219, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
ORD has worked with numerous U.S. communities to study how green infrastructure (GI) can be utilized to improve the performance of currently failing wastewater systems, and to understand better the co-benefits of this approach to water management and related social, economic, and environmental ramifications. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) evaluated the water infrastructure and gave the U.S. a grade of D – because most of our water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life. Further, EPA has 849 combined sewer overflow (CSO) permits that have aggressive deadlines to reduce CSOs that will be very expensive ($187.9B in the next 20 years) to achieve. As communities develop land and alter land use, difficulties associated with managing stormwater can be expected to increase. Single-purpose “gray” stormwater infrastructure is designed largely to move stormwater away from the built environment, whereas GI reduces the quantity and treats stormwater on site while delivering many other environmental, social, and economic benefits. EPA recommends that communities use GI whenever or wherever it can be effective and economically advantageous for aging water infrastructure upgrades. This report is a brief summary of EPA’s GI-related research and results to date of these studies.
Description:
This document is a summary of the green infrastructure reports, journal articles, and conference proceedings published to date. This summary will be updated as more reports are completed. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development has an ambitious research agenda to continue quantifying the performance of green infrastructure for the next five years. This report contains the synopses of the significant findings, lessons learned, and guidance to communities for one roof downspout disconnection, three green plus one conventional roof, two rain garden and bioretention, and two permeable pavement projects across eight EPA regions. Some of the projects addressed water quality changes, such as bacteria, chlorides, solids, nutrients, and metals through individual storm control measures. Others studied the aggregate hydrologic response from a collection of green infrastructure storm control measures over areal spaces of one to 100 acres over a period of one to seven years. One study focused on the impact of development due to the conversion of farm to suburbs for ten years. In addition to the green infrastructure performance studies, twelve sites were systematically characterized for disturbed urban soil infiltration rates. While this is the most comprehensive summary of the Office of Research and Development’s projects to date, the findings of the projects for the next five years will greatly increase our ability to apply green infrastructure.