Guide to Greenspaces
Greenspaces play an integral role in bettering communities and the environment. Within any community there are structures put in place to manage the environment and the economy. Greenspaces, and more specifically green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), can be used to provide those benefits and to help improve the environmental, social, and economic aspects of any community. Neighborhoods such as Eastwick Philadelphia that are in major flood zones are the perfect place to implement GSI because it is known that the area will heavily benefit.
Background
Green Stormwater Infrastructure is generally defined as natural infrastructure such as plants, rocks, and other naturally occurring materials that are put in urban spaces to mitigate the effects of stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff is the result of urban environments that cover land that used to be able to properly drain and filter rainwater. Because of impermeable infrastructure in cities and urban environments, stormwater is forced to run along these surfaces in order to drain back into streams and rivers nearby. This results in water contamination and increased pollution levels. These high levels of pollution require stormwater to be treated and cleaned before it can be sent back into nearby rivers.
Under normal weather conditions most sewer and drainage systems can treat the water appropriately and lead it to nearby water systems. The issue occurs when large storms come along and the drainage system either overflows or clogs. When this happens the water is not appropriately treated and instead runs directly into streams and rivers. Developing greenspaces in these flood zones is important because they can naturally filter the overflowing water before it reaches the rivers.
To better understand where green infrastructure fits into flooding and water treatment, it is important to understand the current systems in place. There are two types of infrastructure: gray and green. Gray infrastructure is all of the pipes, sewers, and tunnels that carry water throughout a city. The current gray infrastructure systems in place throughout the country are quite old and desperately need to be updated. According to the EPA’s grading system on infrastructure, the United States gets a D+. Cities need to update their gray infrastructure as soon as possible and Philadelphia is no different.
Within gray infrastructure there are two types of drainage systems called a combined system and a separate system. Nearly 60% of Philadelphia’s sewage system is a combined system, seen above, which means that the pipes carry both stormwater runoff and wastewater. Separate systems on the other hand have two different pipes for stormwater and wastewater. This means that the stormwater is not treated and simply flows directly back into streams and rivers.
Combined drainage systems work well while the weather is nice, but the issues arise as soon as there is too much water and the pipes overflow. Since combined pipes have both wastewater and untreated stormwater in them, when flooding occurs both stormwater and wastewater cover the street and enter people’s homes and businesses. This is where GSI comes in. GSI can work with and replace current drainage systems by having rocks, soil, and plants soak up and filter the water without the concern of extra pollution.
Benefits
There are environmental, economic, and social benefits to implementing GSI. Environmental benefits include reducing carbon dioxide and improving air quality, as well as reducing energy use due to the shade and temperature decrease provided by trees. Additionally, having more plants in the environment increases biodiversity and supports the livelihood of new wildlife, bugs, bees, and birds that would not be in urban environments without greenspaces.
The economic benefits of greening are the increase of property value in areas with more green space and the increase of jobs in relation to GSI. The final benefit to the economy as a result of GSI is increased tourism. A statistic from the Philadelphia Water Department states that “Already, the Schuylkill alone generates $589.9 million in economic impact, supports 6,154 jobs, and creates $37.7 million in tax revenue for the region each year.” Those numbers would likely increase significantly if cleaner water with more wildlife was a part of Philadelphia’s rivers.
Finally the social impacts of greenspaces are beneficial as well. Greenspaces inspire people to participate in outdoor recreational activities such as biking, hiking, fishing, and many others. There are additional studies that show that greenspaces can reduce crime rates and stress for residents in these areas (source).
Global Greenery
There are great examples of green stormwater infrastructure all over the world that can be used as examples for cities like Philadelphia to implement even on a small scale. The ideas in cities like Singapore that are globally recognized for their sprawling greenspaces and unique architectural designs inspire ideas for places where plants and greenspace can be uniquely incorporated into an urban environment.
Other cities that are leading the globe in green infrastructure are Stockholm and Vancouver, British Columbia and then some cities in the United States as well such as Virginia Beach, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Boston, Massachusetts. A key part of these green cities is that they consider global warming and stormwater runoff from a holistic perspective and understand how the two relate to each other. There are projects like The Greenovate Boston website that are great for setting sustainability goals and helping cities reach them. Boston, for example, has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050 (source). Projects like this can help with accountability and action based work.
Philadelphia has similar goals within the Green City Clean Waters program that has been developed by the Philadelphia Water Department. Green City Clean Waters is a 25 year plan to reduce the amount of pollution that flows into streams and rivers as a result of the combined sewer system. It was founded in 2011 and in accordance with their long term plan they should meet their goals by 2036.
Philadelphia GSI Opportunities
The Eastwick neighborhood of Philadelphia is a great example of an area in the city that would benefit from GSI. There is an abandoned school in Eastwick called George Wharton Pepper Middle School that is the perfect place for a greenspace. Part of the reason why this area of South Philly is so great for a wetland is that it is a natural flood zone and flooding will only get worse as climate change continues to impact the planet. Eastwick has a history of flooding which has been an issue for nearly a century and it gets worse every year. Eastwick is located next to the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, shown below, and ideally a continuous transition from the refuge to a wetland would be perfect to maximize land use.
https://www.leaveittonature.org/background
A group called Leave it to Nature found in a model study that there is only one proposed solution that actually limits the effects of flooding in Eastwick and that is if “the 124.5-acre parcel adjacent to Heinz Refuge is restored as wetlands to receive floodwaters from Eastwick’s streets.” While a wetland would be great at the George Wharton Pepper Middle School site, there is also potential for a wide variety of GSI to be implemented throughout Eastwick.
There are a multitude of different types of GSI such as bioswales, green roofs, land conservation, pervious pavement, rain gardens, rainwater harvesting, stormwater wetland, and urban tree canopies. The types of GSI that would work best in Eastwick are pervious pavement, stormwater wetland, and rain gardens/bioswales.
Pervious pavement, as seen above, would be great in places around Eastwick that are still developed such as grocery store parking lots, apartment complex parking lots, and any other section of pavement that could benefit from drainage. This type of GSI is also called permeable pavement and is essentially when the road, sidewalk, or parking lot is covered with permeable materials to allow stormwater to flow through the pavement rather than run off. It is often made out of bricks, stones, or gravel and it could be a great solution for developed areas in Eastwick.
Another beneficial solution is to develop street corners or people’s yards into greenspaces. Rain gardens and bioswales can be a great option for people to put on their property or for cities to put on street corners. Rain gardens are small patches of garden or plants that allow rainwater to soak into the soil. They are often quite deep and can hold a lot of rain or flood water. They also have the additional benefit of being quite pretty.
Bioswales are very similar to rain gardens and can be implemented on a large scale around the city. While they have a similar function they are most commonly found on street corners and at intersections. The most flooded intersections in Eastwick would be the best place to build new bioswales.
The largest and probably most impactful GSI in this neighborhood would be a wetland in the entirety of the George Pepper Middle School lot. If a large greenspace was put in place of the abandoned school the majority of the stormwater and drainage issues that lead to flooding in the area could at least be reduced.
Within the wetland there could hopefully be habitat regeneration and the opportunity for community members to have more access to natural spaces. The benefits of being able to spend time surrounded by greenspace are tremendous, therefore places like the George Wharton Pepper Middle School are the perfect place to put resources into in order to create an outdoor space for the community. The catastrophic flooding that Eastwick has to endure annually could be reduced by implementing these solutions. A large wetland would not only help the community but Philadelphia as a whole. There are hundreds of abandoned sites all over the United States that could be converted back into natural spaces. This change and demolition of unused impermeable infrastructure could be a highly impactful result of recreating a natural environment in a place where space is not being maximized and pollution is occuring.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hoshaiah-long-0597a549
Hoshaiah Long is currently working as the Director of Advancement of The Buck Hill Conservation Foundation. She graduated from University of Hawaii at Manoa with honors and now lives in Philadelphia where she plans to stay active in environmental justice.
