Stormwater as it outlets in the Washington Park Arboretum. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

You’ve probably heard it pelting your windows, or felt it dripping down your neck, but in case you didn’t: it’s been raining an awful lot this fall. October 2016 brought a new record of rainfall (in recorded history) to Seattle. October is usually damp, but not typically torrential. This October had 10.05 inches, when our average is around 3.25 inches. In certain areas of Eastern Washington, they had 400% of their average rainfall. Washington no long has any areas that are in official drought (read more about it all here). How do we deal with all that extra water on Capitol Hill?

Water runs downhill and can do so in a hurry. That’s all well and fine, but when you put down lots of cement, have drains that overflow, or cut down trees that displace water, you have problems. Lucky for us (despite our state voting down a climate bill), we live in a relatively forward thinking region.

The Swale on Yale project (Image: Seattle.gov)

Green stormwater infrastructure is a solution to the above problems, and an all encompassing term for rain gardens, cisterns, green roofs, bioretention ponds, and permeable pavement. These systems not only help slow water on its downhill destiny, but they can filter out nasty stuff at the same time. As I’ve told you before, our stormwater systems aren’t as great as they could be. When we get a lot of rain, sometimes it has no where to go but into a basement, down a steep cement hill, or other places we don’t want it, causing property damage along the way. The chemicals that collect on our homes and blocks can often travel directly into Lake Washington or Lake Union without treatment, eventually ending in Puget Sound. And, as gross as it sounds, in some areas, stormwater flows into a combined sewer system, which means backups during storms can send raw sewage out and about as well. While it might sound great to go in and fix problematic public infrastructure, it often isn’t feasible. Investing in the aforementioned green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in private properties can help.

How do King County and Seattle Public Utilities encourage people to create such infrastructure? They give them a rebate! If you qualify, the rebate can cover up to 100% of the cost of installing either a cistern or a rain garden. To qualify, you have to live in an area that has those nasty, combined sewer systems I mentioned above. Capitol Hill, being an older part of the city, has a decent amount of this lurking below. If you are interested, the whole process is pretty well lined up for you by the 700 million gallons project, which aims to manage (you guessed it) 700 million gallons of polluted storm water per year with GSI by 2025.

Let’s talk about the way a couple of these systems works. Cisterns are pretty simple to understand: water falls on your roof, you collect it in essentially a giant rain barrel, and then use it at other times of the year to say, water your garden. This saves you money, and when you water, the little bit of gunk from your roof is filtered by the soil and plants. Rain gardens take this one step further by creating a shallow depression with a specific soil makeup that slows, absorbs, and filters run-off from your roof, while watering a well adapted, low maintenance suite of plants in the process.

Simpler methods of improving your GSI include: planting trees (which suck up and filter a lot of water), taking out concrete (run-off has more places to go, more slowly), or mulching and composting your garden beds (filtering and absorbing, while also helping your plants). More complicated methods involve green roofs, bioretention ponds, and permeable pavement. There’s lots of real-life examples already in place on the Hill.

Ok, so maybe you don’t aren’t eligible for a rebate, you rent, or you don’t have a yard. That doesn’t get you off the hook from thinking about this stuff. I believe most of us think clean water is a good thing and being an informed citizen is vital to healthy communities and individuals (and shouldn’t play second fiddle to other important issues like healthcare and evil overlords). Maybe your place of work, your school, or your apartment building could create a system? There’s a cool community of people in the Puget Sound Region working on this sort of infrastructure because they believe that we don’t need 14 million pounds of toxic runoff in Puget Sound every year (unfortunately these systems can’t keep Prozac and cocaine out of our native fish).

Still not convinced this stuff is cool and worthwhile? Go soak your head in that big nasty puddle on 15th Ave by Volunteer Park and then get back to me.