You are here:
USEPA Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Program: Green Infrastructure for Stormwater Management
Citation:
Gilliland, A. USEPA Safe and Sustainable Water Resources Program: Green Infrastructure for Stormwater Management. Presented at UC Seminar Series, Cincinnati, OH, May 25, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
UC Seminar Series for geography department to shre ongoing GI research with students.
Description:
The water research portfolio of the USEPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) includes a significant focus on stormwater management as a major cause of contaminants in and degradation to surface waters. The importance of maintaining and restoring natural hydrology via green infrastructure as much as possible is increasingly recognized as a more sustainable way to manage stormwater while gaining additional community and economic benefits. Many communities with combined sewer systems are incorporating additional green infrastructure pilot demonstrations as part of their Long Term Control Plans (LTCP) to upgrade their wastewater infrastructure to reduce Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs). Through collaborations with several of these communities, ORD has several ongoing field studies to study changes in hydrology and reduction of contaminants with implementation of green infrastructure pilots. Database tools are under development to make most relevant data from green infrastructure field studies more accessible. Stormwater modeling tools developed by ORD are also used extensively by communities to upgrade wastewater infrastructure to manage larger stormwater peak volumes and low impact development green infrastructure to keep stormwater out of the system. These efforts from the USEPA ORD's green infrastructure research will be summarized in the presentation.