About

• Plan covers all public spaces in the county with recommendations for private properties

• Enforced for all county owned spaces and heavily trafficked public spaces such as: downtown cores, town centers, alongside feeder roads, and surrounding municipal buildings and schools

• Priorities for the implementation of GI should be designated by a thorough analysis that includes 3 main investigations: watershed/floodplains, impervious surface concentrations, and temperature gradients

• Plan should be enforced through annual reports, metric reports, and protection requirements

• Examples of green infrastructure and policies to implement

  • Green Alleys

  • Eco-Roofs (white/cool roofs, green roofs, & blue roofs) requirement for all new buildings

  • Green roof minimum

  • Permeable/reflective pavements

  • Bioswales

  • Urban trees

  • Rain gardens

  • Minimum native planting/invasive species ratio

  • Percent impervious surfaces maxim

• Examples of past infrastructure patterns to eliminate

  • Mandatory parking minimums for all commercial applications

  • Impervious surfaces (by implementing percent impervious surfaces maximum)

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Benefits

• Green alleys/streets, rain barrels, and tree plantings are estimated to be 3-6 times more effective in managing storm-water per $1000 invested than conventional methods.

• Every fully vegetated acre of green infrastructure would provide total annual benefits of $8,522 in reduced energy demand, $166 in reduced CO2 emissions, $1,044 in improved air quality, and $4,725 in increased property value.

• $8 million was invested into GI in Portland, OR to save $250 million in hard infrastructure costs. One GI sewer rehabilitation project saved $63 million, not counting other benefits such as cleaner air, groundwater, reductions in CSO and runoffs, &  recharge benefits. 
  Trees and vegetation can increases residential property values up to 37% 

• Cities can have energy savings from green roofs of 15-45% of annual energy consumption—mainly from lower cooling costs.
  Cool or white roofs can save up 65% of energy savings (annual energy consumption). 

• Washington D.C. estimated that the installation of green-roofs on most eligible buildings could yield a 6-15% reduction in the number of CSOs into local rivers, with CSO water volume reductions of up to 26%

• Since committing to GI projects and implementations in 2006, Philadelphia, PA has saved approximately $170 million along with drastically reducing their CSO’s and improving their compliance with federal water regulations. 

• Building a wastewater treatment system using constructed wetlands costs about $5.00 per gallon of capacity compared to roughly $10.00 per gallon of capacity for a conventional advanced treatment facility 
  Permeable pavement can reduce storm-runoff volume by 70-90%

• A study in Los Angeles showed that increasing pavement reflectivity by 10-35% could produce a 0.8°C decrease in UHI temperature and an estimated savings of $90 million per year from lower energy use and reduced ozone levels.

source: “The Value of Green Infrastructure For Urban Climate Adaptation”
authored by Josh Foster, Ashley Lowe, & Steve Winkelman.

• Removal of parking minimums and implementation of green areas encourages non-automobile methods of transit, leading to decreased greenhouse gas emissions and improvement of public health.