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Detroit gets its feet wet with "blue infrastructure"

Detroit gets its feet wet with "blue infrastructure"

Detroit‘s Water & Sewerage Department hopes an experiment in so-called blue infrastructure will help the cash-strapped city stop flushing money down the drain.

The Detroit Free Press reported that a pilot project in the far east side area of Jefferson Village will divert stormwater runoff into a series of small wetlands and pieces of green infrastructure to reduce the pressure on an overloaded city sewer system.

Such experiments in alternative stormwater management could save owners of large, impervious surfaces like parking lots tens of thousands of dollars each year in forgone drainage fees, while the city could save millions by scaling back or scrapping expensive, “gray infrastructure” investments like newer sewer pipes.

But the plan, which is expected to be ready in a few months, is not a done deal, writes John Gallagher in the Detorit Free Press:

It is by no means a simple problem to solve. Multiple licenses and approvals would be needed from a variety of agencies, including the city itself, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and others. But there is great enthusiasm among experts for trying the experiment.

Blue infrastructure is a key recommendation of the Detroit Future City visionary framework and has been much talked about in recent years, but nothing of this magnitude has been done so far in Detroit.

So far, “blue infrastructure” in metro Detroit has meant the creation of porous parking lots and so-called “green alleys” that allow rain and snowmelt to filter down into the ground beneath instead of running off into sewers.

Across the nation urbanists and landscape designers are embracing innovative stormwater capture and retention techniques as concerns over climate change, flooding and drought collide with a renewed interest in public spaces and site design.

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