The Sierra Club released an eye-opening report in November 2006 that ranked Northeast Ohio second to last in the Great Lakes region for handling (its 20.8 billion liters of) combined sewage overflow pumping into waterways every year. In the wake of these findings, an awareness campaign that connects the dots between water, land and environmental impact is long overdue.
A few simple changes at home can lower our personal ‘water footprint’—the amount we rely on the water system. Sierra Club offers a list of things we can do to reduce our household water use, from installing low-flow shower heads to taking five-minute showers instead of baths. It’s possible to save thousands of gallons per month, reduce your environmental impact and lower your water bill. Read more here and here.
The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has committed to replacing area CSOs, which most agree will have a significant impact on sewage overflows. But, individual actions can offer relief before the 20 or 30 years it takes for the Sewer District to complete its work.
Concerned citizen Susan Miller has long advocated for a simple change in municipal ordinances that would allow homeowners to disconnect downspouts and divert them so that they water lawns and gardens. The Cleveland-area can learn from a number of cities that are proactively dealing with stormwater reduction strategies such as allowing residents to disconnect a downspout or place a rain barrel under a back of the house downspout, she wrote recently at RealNeo.
Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Toronto, Vancouver, Minneapolis and Portland are leading the way (and presumably, are not flooding basements as some feared).
Linda Dobson, program manager for Portland’s sustainable stormwater team, enumerates the problems caused by unrestrained urban runoff.
"Whenever it rains, stormwater that isn't properly managed races over streets, rooftops, parking lots, and other impervious surfaces picking up oils, dirt, chemicals, and other pollutants," she writes. "Those pollutants get carried into streams and rivers, an unhealthy diet for fish and other critters."
The gold standard seems to be Portland, OR a city in hyperdrive to retrofit old concrete and asphalt hardscape include ecoroofs, "green" streets and parking lots, bioswales, stormwater planters, "rain" gardens, and even a "stormwater wall"—with the goal of capturing and filtering urban runoff before it flows into the rivers.
Miller is taking her case to Cleveland Sustainability Program Manager Andrew Watterson (who agrees with downspout disconnection, Miller says), and Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson-Jones.
Run-off reduction strategies such as disconnecting downspouts, planting rain gardens, or replacing concrete with more permeable driveway surfaces were not considered a serious solution in a 2006 study of the Doan Brook Watershed.
The study, conducted by the Rocky Mountain Institute as part of the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative, was professionally reviewed and concluded: "The framers of the (report) suggest that distributed runoff reduction measures are not technically feasible, not cost effective, not easily implemented, and not reliable. Based on the information provided in the report, and on the increasing attention Low Impact Development technologies are receiving nationwide, these claims appear to be unsubstantiated."
Read a review of the Doan Brook Watershed Study Report here.
Resources on reducing stormwater runoff
- EcoCity Cleveland: Responsibilities upstream
- Cuyahoga Soil and Water Conservation District
- Low Impact Development project in Chagrin River watershed
- Lessons from a flood: Cuyahoga River Watershed
- City of Seattle natural drainage system
- NRDC report: Rooftops to Rivers
- Solutions to stormwater pollution—Chagrin River Watershed Partners publications
- Benefits of stormwater wetlands (see article featuring Biohabitats on pages 10-13)
