| "Conventional
drainage practice focuses on quickly getting water away
from desirable structures (especially buildings and roads),
often at the expense of adjacent land and aquifers. Water
that is considered ‘excess’ is piped or shunted
into ditches for delivery to a surface body of water.
This deprives the land of infiltrated rainfall and increases
the eroding, sediment-carrying and flooding power of the
runoff. The true source of these problems may be the engineered
structures themselves. Restoration of downstream lands
and water bodies may not be possible without removing
the structures." |
| |
J.
William Thompson
Kim Sorvig
in "Sustainable Landscape Construction" |
| "Urban
hydrology...is launching a porous-surface watershed-restoration
movement that helps land absorb rainwater quickly and
release it slowly...This hydrological reform is part of
a broader design movement that takes unnecessary infrastructure
dollars out of the ground and invests them in houses,
neighborhood support systems, and landscapes." |
| |
Paul Hawken
L. Hunter Lovins
Amory Lovins in "Natural Capitalism" |
The Creek Week events of 2001 in Santa Barbara
brought to public awareness the good work that is being done
by local agencies, environmental groups and others. We join
many others in applauding these efforts. We are especially
gratified to see that more attention is being given to the
opportunities in cleaning up the whole watershed, not just
the creeks. Real progress is being made!
My firm, County Landscape & Design,
in Santa Barbara, California, has been a leader in sustainable
landscape design and construction for over 30 years. As a
result of our work, we have become conversant with a number
of watershed-friendly systems, techniques and best management
practices.
In an attempt to make a contribution, we
are offering this larger look at watershed management techniques
as a way of broadening the knowledge base and stimulating
discussion among interested parties. We hope that some of
these concepts are of interest to you. We offer to sit down
with anyone at any time to discuss the practicalities of implementation
or any other aspect of the watershed.
It is becoming ever more obvious that the
conventional pave-and-pipe approach to managing urban runoff
doesn’t work. Because the orthodoxy of modern industrial
culture regards rainwater as a waste product rather than as
a resource, engineering "solutions" to perceived
and real stormwater management problems have resulted in widespread,
pernicious and ever-worsening damage. Our creeks, rivers,
lakes and oceans must receive increasing doses of pollutants
which are utterly foreign to their abilities to process and
bioremediate inflows. In addition, they must deal with these
toxic materials at concentrations that are far greater than
the carrying capacity of even the most effective natural systems.
This has resulted in an alarming degradation of water quality,
public health and safety, and the integrity of natural aquatic
ecosystems.
The response to this has been widespread
public outcry and a blossoming of public will to solve the
problem. Locally, a hotel bed tax and other funding measures
have been invested in an energetic and well-received program
aimed at creek and beach cleanup. Water quality monitoring,
public education, street sweeping programs, extensive creek
cleanups and the development of a local Watershed Resource
Center are some of the outcomes of this effort.
Now more and more, our attention is being
directed towards reducing or eliminating the upstream sources
of polluted runoff. Simply stated, there will be no end to
the work needed to clean up creeks and beaches as long as
we continue to treat the watershed as a highly efficient funnel
to direct oil, human and animal waste and other unfortunate
byproducts of modern life into our waterways. And that is
exactly what our urban infrastructure does with marvelous
and appalling efficiency.
The answer is to take a fresh look at the
watershed and to recognize that every square foot of land
upstream - whether under natural or manmade cover - is a functional
(or dysfunctional) part of that watershed. Communities and
individual landowners must take responsibility for their contribution
to the problem. Each home, commercial or public building,
parking lot and road must be redesigned to reduce or eliminate
runoff, to filter pollutants and to be a constructive rather
than a damaging element in the larger system to which it contributes.
The solution to water pollution problems
begins at the peak of every roof . There are inspiring, cost-effective,
well-proven methods of optimizing the built watershed at every
step of its cascade towards the ocean. This document is a
summary of current knowledge that draws from the worldwide
experiences of a broad variety of practitioners in many fields.
It is by no means exhaustive, but it is at least ambitious,
and perhaps it represents a respectable percentage of current
knowledge. There are many things we should be doing, and doing
soon, if we are to truly remediate the damage that we and
our forebears have done. And when we have finally built an
efficient urban watershed system, it will be a tremendous
asset for us and for future generations.
There is a natural order to the world, and
we violate that order at our peril. It is my hope that there
will be inspiration as well as information in the pages that
follow, and that we can use some of these techniques to lead
our communities back to the enduring way of living in harmony
with the natural systems that give us life. If we can imagine
a world where people can once again drink from the streams,
swim without fear, look upon a wetland without feeling the
pain of its degradation, then we can begin to make these things
a reality. The path is not hidden; it is right in front of
our eyes. We only need to see it, and then to do what is right.
Please contact
me at any time. We’d be interested in hearing what
is happening in your community and we’d be especially
grateful for additions and corrections to this information.
Thank you for your attention.
Respectfully submitted,
Owen Dell
2/12/02
odell@silcom.com
1.805.962.3253
PO Box 30433, Santa Barbara, CA 93130-0433
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