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Sustainable Storm Water Management

November 17, 2004

A strange occurance of events led to my attendance of a conference yesterday in Troy. I’ve only been with ALNM for three weeks, but my boss asked me to represent the company at the vendor booth. He had registered himself and another employee, but he could not go, and she has been very sick this week, so he asked me to go. I was happy to take the 10 hours out of my day to learn more about storm water.

The conference was put together by SEMCOG and various Southest Michigan governments. The topic of the conference was Sustainable Stormwater Management: Moving it forward in Southeast Michigan. Honestly, it was quite invigorating, and helped in solidifying my career goal of working with storm water management issues.

You may be asking, just what is sustainable storm water management? Sustainable storm water management works to reduce storm water runoff, to eliminate flooding risks, to save the environment by treating water as a resource, not a waste product. By capturing as much rain and precipitation where it lands, and keeping it there, we can reduce flooding and eliminate runoff that leads to poor water quality it rivers, lakes and streams.

Here are just a few important principles I took from the conference:

• "Treat water as a resource - not a waste product!"
• "Celebrate water as a precious resource!"
• Green roofs, rain gardens and porous pavements are key to developing water conscious buildings and properties, and need to be used more often.
• Don't use conservation techniques as an afterthought when designing buildings and developments - Think about conservation from the start.
• Michigan is among the top ten states for building LEED accreditted buildings.
• Absorbing water is a key to environmental integrity.
• Wetlands should be the last place to put stormwater. They rely on clean, cool water; not dirty, hot runoff!

The main presenters at the conference were people from a company called Conservation Design Forum. This company specializes in conservation design for new and remodeled buildings and sites. They work primarily in Chicago and the Midwest. Last year they helped the Holland Garden Club design a green roof for the Herrick Public Library (which was in turn put on hold by the library, unfortunately). This company rocks!

Here are a few cool websites to check out:

• Conservation Design Forum
• Integrated Archicture
• West Michigan Rain Gardens
• Chicago Center for Green Techonology
• U.S. Green Building Council

Posted by paul at November 17, 2004 10:57 AM

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