Green Roof Resource

The WEF Sustainability Conference was held this week in Washington, DC. During the conference, a multitude of available resources were recommended to learn more about green infrastructure and sustainable water management. Below is a brief list of the resources in no particular order that I found interesting. I’ve included links where appropriate. I’m still trying to track down a book that was mentioned during the opening session, Sustainable Watershed Management. Any additional information on it would be helpful.

1. The Santa Clara Valley Water District has taken significant efforts to reduce energy and water consumption through water conservation and recycling programs. Their efforts are summarized in a 2007 report entitled
From Watts to Water.

2. With climate change affecting the frequency and magnitude of storm events, JP Morgan has recently published a guide to evaluating corporate risk with a focus on water. The report, Watching Water, provides tools for assessing impacts on companies due to decreased water quantity and quality.

3. The Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment and Award Scheme (CEEQUAL) is an awards scheme for acknowledging excellent environmental quality on civil projects. CEEQUAL was developed in the UK and is based upon a points system.

4. The Pacific Institute has developed two water to air models. These models provide information on the energy and air quality effects of water management projects in urban and agricultural water districts.

While San Francisco has had a green building map (developed by M. Landman Communications & Consulting) for quite some time, California has recently released their own green building directory and map. The green building directory is searchable according to location, LEED rating and status, project owner, and the inclusion of energy efficiency projects.

Andrew Turner of HighEarthOrbit and Mapufacture, Inc blogged about the state map a couple of days ago. He converted the data into a KML file, which is available from the post for those who wish to create their own map from the data. He developed a revised map based upon the data. This revised map easily sorts the buildings according to LEED certified buildings, buildings pending LEED certification, an other category, and those buildings under 10,000 square feet.

Last week I attended the Smart Growth speaker series at the National Building Museum. Two speakers presented on green infrastructure strategies.

The first speaker, Nancy Stoner of that Natural Resources Defense Council, presented a summary and update from the 2006 NRDC report, Rooftops to Rivers: Greening Strategies for Controlling Stormwater and Combined Sewer Overflows. I enjoyed the definition of green infrastructure that she presented:

“Green infrastructure uses soil and vegetation in urban and suburban areas to manage and treat precipitation naturally rather than collecting it in pipes.”

The majority of Stoner’s talk focused on the efforts to promote green infrastructure technologies by cities. Cities that were highlighted in the talk include Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, New York, and Washington, DC.

Jennifer Malloy from EPA’s water quality permitting program stated that EPA supports green infrastructure (as noted in a previous post). To effectively tackle stormwater management and improve our surface waters, Malloy encouraged the idea of “rain as a resource, not a waste.” This may be apparent to gardeners, but this is a radical idea to those involved in large-scale stormwater infrastructure projects.

Green infrastructure is easy to adopt in eastern states, but under western “use it or lose it” water law, adoption is more complicated. Water that is not immediately used cannot be retained for future used. However, prior to development, a greater percentage of rainfall infiltrated the ground and a smaller percentage ran off to surface waters. Urbanization has shifted this balance sending more water downstream. Green infrastructure could serve as means of restoring this balance, but this depends upon how the laws are written in western states. Will the courts be determining the fate of green infrastructure?