Detroit is going to pilot “blue infrastructure” in one neighborhood to keep stormwater runoff out of the sewer system and direct it into ponds, fields and other natural settings. This could mean saving for city businesses. Currently in Detroit, runoff from rainwater and snowmelt is so problematic that the city charges commercial landowners to deal with the impact. According to the Detroit Free Press:
The city’s Water & Sewerage Department began charging commercial landowners a monthly drainage fee in 2013 to cover the cost of cleaning up water than runs off impervious roofs, parking lots, and other hard surfaces into the city’s sewers where it mixes with sanitary waste and must be cleaned before discharge into the river.
If the diversion of rainwater to a nearby man-made wetlands is successful, that would eliminate that charge, making … business[es] more profitable. Written citywide, blue infrastructure could save business owners millions each year and make doing business in the city that much more likely.
Last month, Detroit’s Economic Development Corp. approved spending $162,000 to hire the Detroit-based Giffels Webster Engineers to come up with innovative solutions for the city’s runoff problem. The Free Press reports that dealing with the runoff will most likely “mean funneling the water off the parking lot into a nearby vacant field where the water would pass through a natural filtration system as in a wetlands and eventually be discharged to the Detroit River.”
There’s no estimate yet on cost or how long constructing the test system will take.
Jenn Stanley is a freelance journalist, essayist and independent producer living in Chicago. She has an M.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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