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Earth & Sky :More Info About Natural Drainage Page 7 of 9 DA: Yes, roadways. 25% of the city landscape Is obviously a lot of space and it's space that the city does have some control over unlike private property. Now that doesn't mean that we're not going to now explore what folks could do on private property. The future will lean towards having new technology for larger areas that are more commercial and Industrlal. So In other words, you'd have In an industrial area, a typical bullding Is you could have an acre of roof on a building that's really only one story high because It's a storage or warehouse bullding. so you've got a tremendous amount of Impervious surface and yet you're trying to pack a lot of Industrlal use in the area. We may have to go to new technologies like applying green roof technology. I think parking lots are another great place to start applying the natural drainage system concepts of infiltration. We're testing a couple of streets in the High Point project, about 3 city blocks of porous roadway pavement, not just the sidewalks but the actual driving lanes with porous asphalt. We're testing new technologies, we're trying to institutionalize the approach through the building code and storm water code, and we're trying to export the information we think this is really important because we share these water bodies together and we have lots of Clean Water Act regulations and we're trying to help jurisdictions around us learn about what we're doing and hopefully apply some of these techniques to areas they are developing why make some same mistakes that we made a hundred years ago? It's just not necessary anymore. SG: I live In Baltimore, and one of the problems we have Ilke we have in most large cities, is funding. A lot of times, the immediate infrastructure needs take precedence, the old Band-Aid fix to something. How do you go about selling an Idea Ilke this to your city council? DA: Especially in older cities, the right-of-way, at some point, the old infrastructure needs to be replaced, and typically, you'll have a street ripped up and instead of putting back the street as we used to think of it, especially in residential areas, you can basically put a different kind of infrastructure back, in this case, a natural Infrastructure that's more sustainable in the long run, and actually costs less money, and provides all these other community benefits that we hand not counted on In the first place which is the livability issue and the greening of the city streets. People's perceptions of safety and community... these are all benefits to be gained by any city whether they're redeveloping because It's time to change out the infrastructure, or new cities [hat are expanding. sG: Would this cost more, than say the traditional... DA: No. Actually, we've been watching the costs very closely and the highest cost to doing a typical street construction is the cost of concrete. These are very expensive materials. Our streets are gaining higher levels of water quality compliance and detention compliance at a lower cost because, Instead of now having to put a large water quality underground vault Into the street, your water quality requirements, which most cities and state have to do now through the Clean Water Ad, they can basically put In vegetation and soil which costs a lot less. so our streets are actually costing 1/4 to 1/3rd less to meet the same environmental to meet or surpass the environmental protection requirements. SG: Is there anything else that you'd like to add that I may not have thought about asking? http://earthsky.com/shows/showsmore.php?t=20041103 11/8/2004