Green Infrastructure

This Handbook has been prepared as a general guide to the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of constructed wetlands for the treatment of domestic wastewater, agricultural wastewater, coal mine drainage, and stormwater runoff in the mid-Atlantic region; the Handbook is not a design manual.

The purpose of this guide is to help communities utilize the right RFP language that will allow experts to respond with their best recommendations for managing flood and stormwater hazards. Changing the way in which we request services (such as designs, studies or plans) may increase the quality and variety of the resulting proposals in favor of those that use nature-based or other innovative solutions that increase resiliency and provide additional public benefits.

Fact sheet about the benefits of bioswales and key tips for designing them.

A bioswale or vegetated swale is a form of bioretention used to partially treat water quality, attenuate flooding potential and convey stormwater away from critical infrastructure. These systems are linear, with length to width dimensions much greater than the more typical 2:1 applied to bioretention cells.

Chapter on infiltration berms in Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual.

Chapter about pervious pavement—pavement that allows stormwater to soak through and be absorbed by the ground rather than flowing along the road surface—in the Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual.

Chapter about infiltration basins in the Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs guide.

Chapters about infiltration trenches and beds in Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual. They help store and absorb overflow runoff during storms.

Chapter in Pennsylvania Stormwater BMP guide about rain gardens, which are areas planted with native vegetation to absorb stormwater.

Chapter of Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual about vegetated swales, channels planted with trees, shrubs, or grasses to infiltrate runoff.

Short guide about green roofs, from the Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual.

Chapter of Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual describing riparian buffers, forested areas along waterways that filter pollutants and control flooding.

Constructed wetlands are shallow marsh systems planted with emergent vegetation that are designed to treat stormwater runoff. This chapter of the Pennsylvania Stormwater BMPs Manual describes them in detail.

Guide provides information about how constructed wetlands work, as well as tips for site selection, design, and monitoring.

Presentation on stormwater management programs.

Fact sheets explain two important nature-based solutions to stormwater and flooding: bioswales and storm basins.

These guidelines were prepared in conjunction with the Monocacy Creek Watershed Act 167 Stormwater Management Plan Update (2017). The guidelines are important for reinforcing the message of the outstanding natural resources present in the Lehigh Valley and their wide variety of essential services and benefits to local residents and visitors, describing the best practices available for community and site design to preserve or enhance those resources, and defining improved stormwater management site design practices to better mimic natural systems. The guidelines provide 1) an overview of green infrastructure at a regional scale and the associated benefits and 2) engineering guidance for site-specific stormwater management practices to help designers understand and comply with the water balance and green infrastructure provisions of the updated Act 167 Ordinance.

Outlines various green infrastructure techniques and their benefits, along with links to other resources. Includes color photos.

This guide is intended to encourage partnerships between park agencies and stormwater agencies aimed at promoting the use of green infrastructure on park lands. The guide offers information on why partnerships between stormwater managers and parks managers can be beneficial and how you can create such partnerships. The guide presents an overview of green infrastructure and describes practices that can be used to manage stormwater in parks. In addition, you will find information on factors that influence the selection of appropriate green infrastructure practices, such as maintenance requirements.

EPA has developed innovative models, tools, and technologies for communities to manage water runoff in urban and other environments. The resources in this toolkit incorporate green or a combination of green and gray infrastructure practices to help communities manage their water resources in a more sustainable way, increasing resilience to future changes.

This document provides approaches local government officials and municipal program managers (Figure 1) in small to midsize communities can use to incorporate green infrastructure components into work they are doing in public spaces. The guide demonstrates ways in which projects can be modified relatively easily and at a low cost recognizing that municipal resources can be limited.

This publication introduces green infrastructure as a strategic approach to land conservation that is critical to the success of smart growth initiatives and describes the concept and values of green infrastructure and presents seven principles and associated strategies for successful green infrastructure initiatives.

These are best practices for developing parks that are environmentally sustainable and successful in connecting people to nature, including nature-based stormwater solutions (green infrastructure).

Short guide explains the benefits of green roofs and various green roof options.

Series of short guides that describe the benefits of green streets and parking lots, and explore tools such as permeable pavement, rain gardens, and more.

This is a tool for quickly comparing the performance, costs, and some benefits of green infrastructure practices to those of conventional stormwater management practices. The calculator takes users through a step-by-step process of determining the average precipitation at a site, choosing a stormwater runoff volume reduction goal, defining the impervious areas of the site under a conventional development scheme and then choosing best management practices to meets the runoff volume reduction goal in a cost-effective way.

Guide highlights the benefits of riparian corridors and outlines components of their conservation, including acquisition, land-use controls, and stewardship.

Guide provides founding principles for planning, siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and monitoring of constructed treatment wetlands.

Report on Pennsylvania's first statewide comprehensive streamside planting opportunity spatial dataset, published by the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, which is designed to help planners and conservationists find ideal streamside forest planting sites. The report describes this analysis in detail.

Two-page fact sheet outlining the basics of maintaining infiltration berms.

Fact sheet describing pros and cons of infiltration trenches, as well as BMPs and design considerations.

i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools. It's an easy-to-use, computer-based program that allows communities to conduct and analyze a street tree inventory and evaluate current benefits, costs, and management needs. Communities can analyze the economic benefits of their urban forests with Streets (formerly STRATUM), a street tree management and analysis tool for urban forest managers, which quantifies the dollar value of the urban forest’s annual environmental and aesthetic benefits: energy conservation, air quality improvement, CO2 reduction, stormwater control, and increased property value.

Explains the benefits of urban trees and describes strategies to improve tree cover in communities.

This guidance helps citizens and municipalities in urban areas protect bodies of water from polluted runoff that can result from everyday activities. These scientifically sound techniques are the best practices known today. The guidance will also help states to implement their nonpoint source control programs and municipalities to implement their Phase II Storm Water Permit Programs.

The Tree Benefit Calculator allows users to estimate the annual economic and environmental value of individual street trees using inputs of a tree’s location, species and size. It is intended to be simple and accessible and should be considered a starting point for understanding trees’ value in the community, rather than a scientific accounting of precise values. This tool is based on i-Tree’s street tree assessment tool called STREETS, which can be seen at itreetools.org. For more detailed information on urban and community forest assessments, visit the i-Tree website.

Outlines design criteria for various types of stormwater infiltration basins.

Rain barrel ordinance for Reading, Pennsylvania. Encourages and provides guidelines for the use of rain barrels by residents and businesses.

Parks have long played an integral role in community landscapes. As open green space becomes more scarce, public park agencies have new opportunity and reasons to work with other departments and agencies to utilize protected public green space in innovative ways. Designing new or existing parks to manage stormwater using green infrastructure principles is an ideal way to realize many of these benefits. Green stormwater infrastructure installations can be used to revitalize existing parks or enhance the design and functionality of new parks.

Guide to planting and managing trees in urban environments.

Trees in the urban environment can provide many benefits; however, urban tree programs face numerous challenges that can affect their success. This technical memorandum addresses planting and maintaining trees which are adjacent to roadways or sidewalks in urban areas where buildings and impervious surfaces create harsh environments. These street trees can be planted for many reasons including stormwater management or increased shade and green space.

Fact sheet investigating new innovations in stormwater management

Parking is essential for economic growth and business success. Almost every development in Montgomery County includes a parking lot. They play a major role in how our communities look and the quality of the environment. Unfortunately, parking lots can pollute stormwater runoff and increase local flooding. They can pose safety issues for pedestrians and can aggravate the urban heat island effect. For something that occupies such a vast amount of land, causes various impacts, and is used on a daily basis by so many people, the surface parking lot should receive more attention than it has. Parking lots can be retrofitted or built more sustainably. Using innovative site design, including best practices in stormwater management, consideration for community character, and safer pedestrian connections, we can transform our parking lots and reduce impacts. By incorporating green and sustainable practices, over time these improvements could have a significant positive impact on the county’s communities.

Presentation regarding Low Impact Development & Stormwater Management Technical Training

Handbook contains: Information on establishing riparian buffers in a range of urban settings; a step-by-step guide on how to plan, conduct, and evaluate a volunteer riparian planting; a set of handouts that can be used when preparing volunteers and community partners for the coordination and implementation of riparian plantings; a regionalized riparian buffer plant list.

Green infrastructure is a network of decentralized stormwater management practices such as preservation of undeveloped areas near a water source, green roofs, tree planting, rain gardens and permeable pavement. This paper gives an overview of the methods used to measure the benefits of green infrastructure on water, energy savings, improved air quality, climate change mitigation, urban heat island mitigation, improved community livability and improved habitat. Multiple case studies are provided.

List of best practices to ensure that parks and recreation sites and environmentally sustainable.

List of effective nature-based stormwater management practices including riparian buffers, pervious pavement, trees, and bioswales.

Chapter of Pennsylvania Stormwater Best Management Practices Manual about filter strips, which are densely vegetated areas between pavement that absorb runoff.

Short fact sheet explaining the benefits of vegetated filter strips, when and where to use them, and how to design them.

Design manual for constructed wetlands.