GI In Seattle: The Importance of Pilot Project Success For All Green Infrastructure

4 01 2012

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Ballard Roadside Rain Gardens, Credit: Seattle Public Utilities

The City of Seattle was one of the early pioneers of utilizing green infrastructure as a stormwater best management practice with projects primarily concentrated on reducing stormwater flows in various creek basins. Over the last few years, the City has turned its attention to using green infrastructure for controlling Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) within the city. While there is currently no consent decree, the City has established a control target of one untreated overflow per outfall per year for CSO discharged based on a 5-year rolling average (Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 173-245). The highest priority for these efforts has been overflows within Lake Washington. Green infrastructure practices are estimated to contribute to this target by controlling 12% of the 16 million gallons needed to be addressed to achieve the City’s goal. The remaining portion will be controlled by conventional grey infrastructure strategies.

The Ballard Roadside Rain Gardens was the first green infrastructure project designed specifically for controlling CSOs. The $1.4 million pilot project was funded by an American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) loan and involved installing a series of rain gardens in the right-of-way along eight blocks in the Ballard neighborhood. The rain gardens were installed in December of 2010 and with the expectation that they would reduce discharge volumes by 59,000 gallons or 1% of the the total within the specic NPDES basin. Unfortunately, many of these rain gardens did not perform as anticipated. As a result, over the last few months the project has received negative press and vocal neighborhood opposition over their performance.

The City conducted an extensive post-construction analysis, and determined  a third of the rain gardens were not draining and another third were underperforming. The main shortcoming identified was that the geotechnical analysis conducted prior to construction was not specific to each rain garden location and therefore could not account for subtle changes in their infiltration rates. As a result, the underperforming rain gardens did not have sufficient infiltration rates to drain within twenty-four hours and underdrains were not used.

After the post-construction evaluation and a comprehensive community outreach effort, the City took corrective action. The public’s main issues included the dangers of standing water (i.e. drowning, mosquito habitat, smell), steep side slopes of the rain gardens, and their overall aesthetics. The corrective action included removing several of the rain gardens, reducing the depths and steepness of side slopes of others, and adding underdrains where they were effective. These changes resulted in reducing the original estimated CSO volume control by 36%.

The City went further and identified recommendations to improve future implementation of green infrastructure projects. Some examples of their recommendations included the following:

Community Engagement

  • Get out into the community early
  • Introduce the problem you are trying to solve, before you present the solution
  • Utilize several communication media to disseminate information and get feedback.

Planning

  • Develop a Project Management Plan (PMP) that outlines roles and responsibilities, schedule, budget, and risks that is approved by management.

Geotechnical

  • Integrate geotechnical engineers into all phases of the project and empower them to speak up.
  • If the corrected (design) infiltration rate is between 0.25 and 0.5 inches per hour, build a redundant system into the design, such as an underdrain.

Design

  • Provide the design for the flow control/bypass plan and erosion and sediment control plan. Do not leave it to the contractor.
  • Review project design, how it functions, and the critical project components with Construction Management ahead of time.

Construction

  • Balance funding sources with the ability to course correct during construction and the documentation requirements.
  • Involve geotechnical engineers in construction to field verify that the excavated or exposed soil look as anticipated.
  • Maintain an open dialogue between contractor, construction management, project manager, designer, and geotechincial engineer.

The City of Seattle should be commended for recognizing the shortcomings of the project and taking quick corrective action. The project serves as a reminder of how important the success of pilot projects are to the future of green infrastructure not only locally but also nationally. News travels fast and high profile failures can cast doubt on the effectiveness of these types of systems and fuel future opposition to projects. When approaching any green infrastructure project, the details and execution are crucial to a project’s success, but when the project is intended to set the standard and introduce the public to green infrastructure practices, it becomes even more critical.

-Brian Phelps

Sources:
Email interview with Shanti Colwell, Environmental Engineer with Seattle Public Utilities
Seattle Public Utilities Case Study
Ballard Roadside Raingardens, Phase I-Lessons Learned


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NYC’s Green Infrastructure Plan

18 11 2010

Last week, the Economist in an articled titled “Trees grow in Brooklyn” reported on U.S. cities implementing green infrastructure strategies to address the pollution of their waterways from storm water runoff. The article focused primarily on New York City and Philadelphia.

According to the article nearly 27 billion gallons of untreated water overflows into the New York harbor each year. NYC’s recently released green infrastructure plan seeks to address run-off from 10% of the impervious surfaces in the City with green infrastructure storm water strategies that range from rain barrels to pervious pavements to green roofs.

The plan estimates that on average the cost per gallon of Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) avoided ranges between $1 to $2 per gallon. In addition, the City calculates that over a twenty-year period, it will receive between $139 million and $418 million in additional triple-bottom line benefits (i.e. energy savings, increase in property values, health) from the green infrastructure.

While NYC’s strategy is also employing grey infrastructure, they see the combination of the two costing less than a grey only approach. The cost of the green-grey strategy is approximately $5.3 billion of which $2.4 billion makes up the cost of the green infrastructure. This is $1.5 billion less than the grey only solution.

Chris Strickland, a deputy commissioner with the New York’s Department of Environmental Protection sums it up in the article saying that this (green infrastructure plan) is a way of achieving more than one thing with tax dollars.

Link to NYC Green Infrastructure Plan

-Brian Phelps


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Triple Bottom Line of Green Infrastructure

18 11 2009

Before and After of Green Infrastructure Improvements
(Source:“Green Cities Clean Waters” Plan)

In an earlier post titled “Making Green Infrastructure Common Place” we discussed the recent release of Philadelphia’s $1.6 billion dollar “Green Cities Clean Waters” Plan. Its thrust is to transform over 4,000 acres of impervious areas within the City’s Combined Sewer System to green space over the next 20 years through the use of green infrastructure strategies. This would involve converting over 34% of all existing impervious areas. Of this, the conversion will primarily be made on public property and right-of-ways. Green streets, the most widely used management tool, will comprise nearly 38% of these improvements (see graphic). The report claims this is “the largest green stormwater infrastructure program ever envisioned in this country”. While green infrastructure has been utilized and proven in many parts of the country, the sheer magnitude and commitment of the city is a radical departure from the conventional approach to stormwater management practices.

Map of Green Street Locations
(Source:“Green Cities Clean Waters” Plan)

So why did Philadelphia decide to rely so heavily on green infrastructure as a means of reducing overflows in their CSO system? Quite simply it was cheaper, significantly cheaper. The plan estimates over the next 20 years the plan is to be implemented, the “triple bottom line” benefits (social, environments, economic) of the plan alone will add up to a present value of $2.2 billion dollars. The following is a breakdown of the benefits that comprise this figure.

  • Heat Stress Mortality Reduction (35%)
  • Recreation (22%)
  • Property Value Added (18%)
  • Water Quality and Habitat (14.5%)
  • Air Quality (4.6%)
  • Avoided Social Costs from Green Jobs (3.7%)
  • Energy Savings (1.0%)
  • Carbon Footprint Reduction (0.6%)
  • Reduction in Construction- Related Disruptions (0.2%)

So instead of employing conventional underground infrastructure that is one-dimensional, and is estimated to cost $16 billion, the city has decided that implementing a multi-dimensional strategy with multiple benefits made more sense. But not only is it more desirable, it is politically easier to implement because it makes the city a more beautiful and healthy place. So if you are going to have to spend the money anyway, why not make it count.

The shortcomings of the conventional “tanks and tunnels” approach were not only that it exceeded the EPA’s affordability standard for stormwater management (2% of median household income), but it also did not address water quality issues and could require green infrastructure tools anyway to meet these requirements. In addition, the report points out that the conventional solution isn’t aligned with the EPA’s broader goals of sustainability, reduces streams baseflow thereby damaging the resources that is designed to protect, and doesn’t offer any secondary triple bottom line benefits. Furthermore, since the conventional solution is not delivered incrementally it is not flexible and does not offer any benefits immediately.

Green infrastructure on the other hand offered the city the opportunity to revitalize and restore the city’s streams and rivers, enhance the quality of the built environment throughout the city, improve air quality, reduce the heat island effect, and sequester carbon. While accumulating these benefits, the approach was more flexible, offered immediate benefits, and, most importantly, the cost of implementation was offset by the dollar value of the benefits. (see Volume 2: Triple Bottom Line Analysis of the plan for specifics)

While conventional infrastructure has its place, the combination of the two can play a significant role in addressing many of the issues facing our cities. It is critical that we continue to move toward making these strategies common place. By doing so we can make our cities healthier and more beautiful for all of us to enjoy, while at the same time responsibly managing our stormwater.

-Brian Phelps


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Categories : Bioretention, Green roof, Green Street, Pervious Pavement, Sustainable Site Strategies

Making Green Infrastructure Common Place

6 11 2009

Philly_Green_City1

Getting more for less is an approach almost everyone can appreciate. Why wouldn’t you want to get the most out of your investments? Appropriately applying green infrastructure in ways that effectively addresses critical stormwater issues while creating a more beautiful and economically vibrant community is common sense. Unfortunately, it isn’t common place. As the use of the available sustainable site tools and technologies continues to grow, it may not be long before green infrastructure is the conventional approach to stormwater management.

With the Release of their “Green Cities Clean Waters Plan”, Philadelphia joins a handful of cities across the Country that have committed to green infrastructure and seek to institutionalizing it throughout the city. Philadelphia’s plan published last September sets forth a bold plan to invest $1.6 billion. Of this total 62% ($1 billion) of it will allocated directly to green stormwater infrastructure. Another 18% ($290M) will directed to stream corridor restoration and preservation and 20%($320M) will address wet weather treatment plant upgrades.

Over the next few weeks we will take a closer look at Philadelphia’s plan. At over 3,000 pages, there is a lot of information to sift through. In addition, we will also look at Pennsylvania Environmental Council released a report titled “Implementing Green Infrastructure: Developing a Winning Strategy to Fund Philadelphia’s Ambitious Plan” that looks at the economic benefits of the plan and how other cities across the country are funding their stormwater initiatives. Together they are an impressive step forward for the City of Philadelphia and the Nation.

-Brian Phelps


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