Friday, 19 April 2013

An Eco friendly world and Green infrastructure go hand in hand

By Laura Brown


Green infrastructure is an eco friendly medium of storing and managing the storm water by the process that was used earlier by nature. These processes has been used and maintained by the nature ever since it was created.

Why green infrastructure?

With the development of structures and buildings in a habitable area, the systems occurring naturally to handle storm water have been greatly disturbed. Roads were built, buildings came up and the soil was compacted by equipments used in construction. A result of these activities was that the amount and extent of soil that could allow storm water to drain was greatly reduced. Only about 2-3 percent of rain that fell on a particular area flowed in the surface area.

The greater flow of storm water has given rise to a few problems. Erosion has taken place in stream banks and building foundations are under treat. In some places, costly shoring has been done to save property. In some areas high voltage ac ductwork on some properties is collecting water. Roads are getting flooded due to subsurface water coming up.

Green Infrastructure concept has come into action to counter all these problems. Green infrastructure found its birth in USA, in mid nineties, to take care of the increasing problems of how to tackle storm water. The biggest source of water pollution in USA is the storm water or non-point source water.

Back 50 years the method used was to collect the excess water and dispose it to some distant land by means of collection system. This process has however turned out of date and it has been replaced by green infrastructure.

Green infrastructure elements

In the management of the rain water usage of the vegetation is made by the green water. Apart from that the sour of the water is also examined. The two elements used in the process are bioswales and rain garden.

The biggest source of storm water is the rain that falls on roof tops. Most of the rooftops have down spouts and gutters as storm water collection system. It may happen that at times the down spouts do not connect well and the water spreads in the adjoining houses. At times the storm water may also drain onto the roads and drive ways.

Downspout addition directs the storm water in an area which is porous like a rain garden or bioswale which is close to the source. The downspout extension is a simpler less costly way to address the storm water issue.

The construction of the bio wells and the rain garden is made in such a way that all the collected water penetrated deep into the layers of the soil. The water is even filtered and solved the problem of pollution and erosion.

These rain -gardens and bioswales are located closed to the structure that produces storm water . For vegetation, usually, native plants are used. The vegetation in a rain garden retains the soil's permeability. These are designed to capture all of a 1 inch rainfall.

A combination of far sightedness, foresight, combined efforts, long term planning are the Green infrastructure projects. This has been established as less expensive than conventional management of storm water. Green infrastructure is not just management of storm water, but lots more. It is the restoring the land development to a more natural state.




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1 comment:

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