STORMWATER MANAGEMENT: EVOLVING TO ADVANCED CLIMATE SOLUTIONS

Written by Tamarin Austin¹

STORMWATER CHASING

Half a globe from my home in the Golden State, I am on a stormwater mission, visiting green infrastructure projects and interviewing stormwater experts. Prior to my trek around ancient European capitals, I spent two months driving across and around the United States. The soles of my shoes have eaten up miles of cobblestone streets near Mozart’s birthplace, the broken sidewalks of the Big Easy’s Garden District, the revitalized "green lungs" of Porto, the arroyos of Albuquerque, the Water Museum of Bratislava, and Lake Shore Drive of Chi-Town.

My reel has photo after photo of bioswales, permeable pavement, retention basins, green roofs, trash capture devices, and daylighted streams from dozens of cities, interspersed with pictures of food I can’t pronounce, but my salivary glands have muscle memory. There are laid-back riverbanks as seen from 10,000 feet; thumbing past the images of a construction site without proper best management practices (BMPs) still makes me twitchy.