Everybody's got a gutter... and they're part of the urban runoff problem. Rain picks up dirty soot and other chemicals from roofs and heads into the gutter. During storms, the dirty water rushes down the gutters and down streets into storm drains... and can pollute beaches, drinking water and wildlife habitat. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
One of the ten threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is nonpoint
source runoff. It’s a catchall category for pollution that’s not being spewed from one identifiable
source. The federal government’s finding that rain washing off concrete and asphalt in cities and
suburbs poses as big a threat to the Great Lakes as waste coming out of a factory pipe. Shawn
Allee has a look at the government’s effort to cut water pollution by remaking the urban
landscape:
Transcript
We’re continuing our series on Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide through the series. Today a look at a broad problem
with no simple solution:
One of the ten threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is nonpoint
source runoff. It’s a catchall category for pollution that’s not being spewed from one identifiable
source. The federal government’s finding that rain washing off concrete and asphalt in cities and
suburbs poses as big a threat to the Great Lakes as waste coming out of a factory pipe. Shawn
Allee has a look at the government’s effort to cut water pollution by remaking the urban
landscape:
(rain running into a sewer)
Water from a rain gutter is pouring into a nearby storm sewer drain. That protects property from
water damage and flooding. But at the same time, they pose an environmental problem for the
Great Lakes.
Roofs, streets and parking lots are made of hard materials like concrete or asphalt. During
storms, rain rushes off these surfaces into storm drains.
The problem is this: the runoff isn’t pure.
Brian Bell’s a storm water expert with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says rain picks
up pollutants on all those roofs and streets, things such as:
“Antifreeze from cars, motor oil, brake fluid, copper from the brake pads, cigarette butts from
trash, household hazardous waste, pesticides that may be overapplied.”
And for most sewer systems, that’s not the worst of it.
“The problem with storm water is, once its mobilized and goes into a storm sewer system, that
system does not treat the waste, so all of those things go to the local waterway untreated.”
In this region, runoff flows into the Great Lakes, where it pollutes beaches, drinking water, and
wildlife habitat.
To fight this, the EPA’s trying something new. It wants to make hard, urban landscapes softer.
The idea’s to replace concrete and asphalt with more soil and plants. That way, water can sink
into the ground and stay out of storm drains.
But how do you do that?
Well, the EPA’s working with places like the Chicago Center for Green Technology to show people
how. The city hopes residents and developers will use what they see here in their own projects.
(city sounds in)
Grace Troccolo’s guiding a tour of the facility.
First stop?
“Our parking lot is slightly pitched, so all of our rainwater flows off into these vegetated bioswales,
which when I’m not with people in the business, I call ‘ditch with plants.'”
The plants aren’t typical bushes or flowers. They’re mostly tall, prairie grasses native to the
Midwest. Their roots help water seep deep into the ground. The Center has several bio-swales,
and they all keep runoff on site and in the ground.
Another stop on the tour is a 40-foot section of the building’s roof. It’s covered with a matt of
short, tangled creeping plants. Grace explains why they’re here.
“So here we are at our green roof. Again, getting back to our issue of storm water management,
the city would like to see more vegetated surfaces and of course, in the city like Chicago there are
a lot of roof surfaces and so this section of the roof is designed to hold all of the rainwater that
falls on it during a one-inch storm.”
Again, the roof’s vegetation retains water and keeps it out of storm drains. Because of these
technologies, the building is an urban runoff success story.
All told, the Center releases less than half as much water to storm drains as similar buildings do.
The EPA wants the average home or business owner to follow suit, but price might keep that from
happening. Green roofs, for example, are more expensive than conventional ones.
But some observers say the biggest obstacles in fighting urban runoff are political. Stephen
Bocking teaches environmental policy at Trent University. He says the public’s used to pointing
fingers at a handful of big, industrial polluters.
People just aren’t used to seeing every house and business as a source of pollution.
“It’s much more difficult to deal with the problem when you’re talking about millions of separate
sources. People can’t just say well, it’s the job of industry or the job of the government to deal with
it. It’s the job of everyone to deal with it in some way.”
In other words, we’re all to blame.
Every new building in a city, or home in a subdivision, creates more hard surfaces, such as new
driveways, new parking lots and new roofs.
“It’s pretty hard to deal with a form of development which is intrinsic to our way of life. It involves
thinking about how we live our lives and how design and build our cities.”
Bocking says the EPA’s plan might not be enough to make up for all the roads and other hard
surfaces we’re building. He says, to succeed, we’ll need to change how we develop land.
There’s not much political support to stop that kind of development right now, so for the time
being, hard surfaces will continue to win out.
For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.