Managing Wet Weather
with Green Infrastructure

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is is hosting the EPA’s “Managing Wet Weather with Green Infrastructure” two-day workshop. This workshop will be held on July 21 and 22 at WVDEP’s training room facility in Kanawha City.

This workshop is targeted to municipalities that deal with wet weather issues. If you manage stormwater, whether in your sanitary collection system (CSO) or in your storm sewer system (MS4) this workshop is for you.

Green infrastructure is management approaches and technologies that utilize, enhance and/or mimic the natural hydrologic cycle processes of infiltration, evapotranspiration and reuse. Green infrastructure approaches currently in use include green roofs, trees and tree boxes, rain gardens, vegetated swales, pocket wetlands, infiltration planters, porous and permeable pavements, vegetated median strips, reforestation/revegetation, and protection and enhancement of riparian buffers and floodplains. Green infrastructure can be used almost anywhere soil and vegetation can be worked into the urban or suburban landscape.

Green infrastructure also includes decentralized harvesting approaches, such as the use of rain barrels and cisterns to capture and re-use rainfall for watering plants or flushing toilets. These approaches can be used to keep rainwater out of the sewer system so that it does not contribute to a sewer overflow and also to reduce the amount of untreated runoff discharging to surface waters. Green infrastructure also allows stormwater to be absorbed and cleansed by soil and vegetation and either re-used or allowed to flow back into groundwater or surface water resources.

For more information, visit http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/courseinfo.cfm?program_id=298&outreach_id=410&schedule_id=1057

posted on 06-22-2009 by Dougherty

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