New York City’s Green Infrastructure Plan: “Green and Blue Coming to a Rooftop Near You”
An Unconventional Solution
“Although New York’s creaky wastewater treatment systems have improved in recent years, it still struggles to deal with the sheer volume of water that a storm can send shooting off city roofs, down streets and over parking lots,” writes Sophie Quinton in her blog on Earth911.com
“The city government has proposed an unconventional solution: Green rooftops, better landscaping and porous pavements may be coming to a neighborhood near you.”
“Rooftop solutions are a major feature of the plan. The plan promotes both blue roofs, which divert rainwater by mechanical means, and green roofs, a layer of vegetation that can be installed on flat surfaces.”
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About the New York Plan
New York’s Green Infrastructure Plan presents an alternative approach to improving water quality that integrates ‘green infrastructure’, such as swales and green roofs, with investments to optimize the existing system and to build targeted, smaller-scale ‘grey’ or traditional infrastructure.
This is a multi-pronged, modular, and adaptive approach to a complicated problem that will provide widespread, immediate benefits at a lower cost. The green infrastructure component of this strategy builds upon and reinforces the strong public and government support that will be necessary to make additional water quality investments.
A critical goal of the green infrastructure component is to manage runoff from 10% of the impervious surfaces in combined sewer watersheds through detention and infiltration source controls.
Posted October 2010