Sponge City, not Hard City: Greening of T or C and Village should be ICIP goal

T or C and the Village of Williamsburg could use storm water to green up, but dump it, polluted, into the river. We pay nearly $9 per 1,000 gallons to pump and treat water and sewer water–”effluent”–used to water the golf course and parks. It’s cheaper to intercept storm water.

Retaining and slowing down storm water runoff into swales and rain gardens and green strips–natural water purifiers–makes a lot more sense than our current practice of racing storm water over hard-surfaces into our wastewater treatment plant and the Rio Grande. It carries sediment and vehicle pollutants such as zinc from tires and other metals as well as hydrocarbons.

The EPA recognizes storm water runoff is one of the biggest dangers to our waterways.
For more information on green streets, green infrastructure, storm water pollution and storm water green uses see:
https://www.epa.gov/soakuptherain/soak-rain-whats-problem
https://www.epa.gov/G3/learn-about-green-streets
https://www.portland.gov/bes/stormwater/about-green-streets

We need to take a page out of China’s book. Sponge City, not Hard City, is smarter, cheaper, healthier and revivifying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge_city.

Green infrastructure and a sponge-city approach to our future is particularly important here. To state the obvious, we live in the desert.

T or C was on the right track when John Mulcahy was mayor over 10 years ago. He hired Van Clothier of Stream Dynamics to do a storm water assessment in 2013. The recommendations and further engineering were never pursued, but would have solved a lot of our downtown flooding problems and golf course/Marie Street Dam problems. See the study at the end of this article.

The Marie Street Dam and Street project is among the top five Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan projects for T or C. Hiring Stream Dynamics to consult or do the design would be wise.

It’s too late for Stream Dynamics to engineer the “Cantrell Dam” project. Wilson & Company, the city’s on-call and under-contract engineer, designed a series of hardened surfaces racing the storm water to the river and a useless retention pond near the highway.

The Village of Williamsburg’s yearly ICIPs have and will be all about repaving its streets, as discussed at the April 9 Village Trustees’ meeting. They also have Wilson & Co. under contract, whose designs race storm water to the river.

Unless the people can convince the T or C City Commission and Williamsburg Trustees to go green and sustainable and pro-environment.

Now is the time to speak up since both are taking public input on this year’s ICIP projects.

T or C will have two ICIP public input sessions tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22 at noon and 5:30 p.m. The Village of Williamsburg will have one ICIP public input session Thursday, May 14 at 3 p.m.