Why Use Green Stormwater Infrastructure?
Experience your streets and parks as a rain-catching oasis, where stormwater is transformed into shade, beauty, and resilience. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI)—also known as low-impact development (LID)—refers to constructed features that use living systems to provide environmental services, such as capturing and filtering stormwater, creating wildlife habitat, providing shade, and recharging groundwater.
A growing number of communities are using GSI to manage stormwater more sustainably while realizing many additional benefits and services.
Water conservation: Using stormwater to irrigate trees and shrubs greens neighborhood streets without increasing demand for water from non-renewable supplies.
Cleaning stormwater: Healthy soils, plant roots, and organic matter filter and break down pollutants in stormwater.
Flood mitigation: Earthen basins infiltrate stormwater into the soil, reducing flowing and standing water on streets and parking lots.
Traffic calming and livability: Chicanes, medians, traffic circles, and right-of-way improvements help create neighborhood streets that are safe and inviting for people walking and biking.
Aesthetics and wildlife: Native and low-water-use plants thrive on stormwater and create beautiful landscapes, habitat for native birds and insects, and a sense of place that celebrates each community’s unique ecosystem.
Shade: Removing asphalt and concrete and planting trees provides cooling shade along neighborhood streets, which mitigates the urban heat island effect (the measurable temperature increase in urban areas with high proportions of heat-trapping and heat-radiating surfaces).
Increased property values: The Arbor Day Foundation has proven that homes and neighborhoods with trees have higher property values.
Community building: A more attractive, safe, and comfortable outdoor environment that uses affordable, integrated stormwater irrigation increases the use of public spaces and makes them more inviting for neighbors to gather.