Stormwater

A colleague and I are collecting examples of stormwater mitigation installations that have been around for at least five years. We are trying to find out if they continue to function well and continue to look good enough to please the public. 

I am interested in some LID continuing education resources (books, classes, conferences, etc).  Any recommendations?

Well said Mark, our proffesion is so variable that it makes it easy for others to put us in a box on one side of it which I find to be simply ‘lanscaping’. We need to work together as a profession to be “armed with facts and calculations” to give creditability to the profession across the board.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This issue is complicated and to say that rain gardens are the answer is not much different than the traditional infrastructure approach, where one solution can solve all problems. In most instances and geographic locations, the solution needs to include water quality and quantity solutions to solve the problem. Rain gardens, bio-swales and…[Read more]

Charles,

“Blame it on the Rain” – Milli Vanilli

Well, not really. I just wanted to quote them! Policy is a difficult thing. Until every land owner is charged by the city for the real cost of thier stormwater impacts from a pre development hydrology, there will be uncecesary systems put ini place.
The cool thing about rain gardens is that for…[Read more]

Cole

Good comments. It is annoying to listen to disciples of the “new” green movement who lack the understanding necessary to design facilities that actually work and can be maintained (sustained). Even here in the NW we have LID facilities being required in locations where they just will not work.

Robin, not to be a sceptic: I have recently moved to hawaii though spent the last 5 years in the califonia working for a large engineering firm. It is difficult to get buy in from the engineers as the systems are simply not as functional there as they are in the NW. The reason for this is that the NW has rain year round whereas cali has no rain…[Read more]

….and a nicely planted raingarden, or artful rainwater catchment system usually looks better, provided it works correctly, than the typical curb and gutter system. I have found that the client is usally into this aspect of LID. In residential applications, is it wonderful if they take ownership of the process and work to make regulatory change…[Read more]

I have found that it is best to be part of the design process early on, integrating bmp and lid strategies into the program. Working with the engineers can often open up more opportunities and gain momentum to make green strategies more tangible to designers, since we can explain the simplicity and practicality of these strategies. In most cases,…[Read more]

Great website–thanks for pointing it out. Living in Seattle, I have visited many of the listed projects, urban and rural, but many more are coming on board. In 2010 some Seattle homeowners will receive $$ rebates for installing rain gardens and cisterns to reduce CSO into Puget Sound and Lake Union. read more: http://www.seattle.gov/util/rainwise

Tomorrow there is a meeting going on about if LA have the right qualifications to submit Grading and Drainage plans for permitting. Click on this link for more info.
http://consensus.fsu.edu/Stormwater-Task-Force/

I like to share this document on sustainable site design. SSI_Guidelines_Draft_2008.pdf

Stomwater is cool in the Sunshine State.

Hey guys! Here is a link to some presentations from a conference in Reno at the University of Nevada that talked about different stormwater and bioretention techniques. Some are really basic info but also some good overall information. The links to presentations are actually at the bottom of this page that you can scroll down to once you open the…[Read more]

It looks pretty old but I like the details and formality of it, especially as it moves between the brick wall.

check out this cool solution to getting water off the property at Duisburg-Nord/ Germany:

Thanks for starting this, Theodore! I know this is hot stuff already in engineering, but there isn’t enough information on it as applies to LA.