Green Stormwater Infrastructure and Rainscaping – Soil Quality to Green Roof

Join Partners of Scott County Watersheds and Noah Truesdell from Iowa Stormwater Education Partnership on Tuesday, April 19th from 12-1pm for a free forum about green stormwater infrastructure and rainscaping!

Stormwater management has evolved from gray to green infrastructure. Gray infrastructure designed for flood management consists of an underground collection system of pipes that discharge directly to local waterways. The goal was to get the water off the landscape as fast as possible. Localized flooding led to the use of detention and retention ponds that hold back water and more slowly release it to local waterways. The discharges are high enough to cause stream instability and it does very little to remove stormwater pollutants. Green stormwater infrastructure is being used more and more in urban landscapes and is designed to mimic the historic hydrology of Iowa. It uses natural systems to capture, filter, and infiltrate rain where it falls on the landscape. Through this process pollutants are removed and flooding is minimized. On a large development scale practices might consist of soil quality restoration, bioretention cells, bioswales, tree trenches, infiltration trenches, green roofs, permeable pavers, rainwater harvesting systems, flood control stormwater wetlands, and detention and retention basins. Rainscaping practices are used to describe green infrastructure practices used on a smaller scale such as on residential lots and consist of soil quality restoration, rain gardens, rain barrels, native plant filter strips-turf replacement, and permeable paver driveways. This presentation will be showing how these practices combat runoff through deceleration, absorption, and storage.

Register for this forum at https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_e2kCZdqjTKWqE03fnxbwPw