STORMWATER MANAGEMENT RESOURCES

• Stormwater Management Is A Worldwide Challenge

  Last month, I wrote about San Francisco's great rain garden/bio-retention basin project. Strategically placed sunken curb cuts, swales or park features collect stormwater and let it filter into the ground, reducing the pressure on overwhelmed storm drains and sewers.

• Rain Gardens Guarding San Francisco

  Laurie Lauria and I spent last week moving out of San Francisco up to Napa, California, dodging the raindrops and taking advantage of a few dry days in this remarkably stormy winter — weather that makes this a perfect time to talk about the need to capture rainwater and protect overwhelmed urban sewer systems.

• These Places Are Pioneering Solutions To Heatwaves And Floods

  Climate change is going just as badly for cities as we have been warned it would. Extreme weather is increasingly common and severe globally. Australian cities have endured a number of recent disastrous events. It’ll get worse, too. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fact sheet outlining impacts on human settlements is a very sobering read.

• Flood Forecasts In Real-Time With Block-By-Block Data Could Save Lives — A New Machine Learning Method Makes It Possible

  I am a hydrologist who sometimes works in remote areas, so interpreting weather data and forecast uncertainty is always part of my planning. As someone who once nearly drowned while crossing a flooded river where I shouldn’t have, I am also acutely conscious of the extreme human vulnerability stemming from not knowing exactly where and when a flood will strike.

• Grad Student Reimagines Oklahoma City With Green Infrastructure Design Using InfoDrainage

  Andrea Tavera, a former University of Oklahoma graduate student, used Innovyze drainage design software to promote LID-based, green infrastructure design in hopes of resolving Oklahoma’s two greatest drainage challenges caused by stormwater runoff: excessive flooding and pollution. 

• America’s Summer Of Floods: What Cities Can Learn From Today’s Climate Crises To Prepare For Tomorrow’s

  Floods are complex events, and they are about more than just heavy rain. Each community has its own unique geography and climate that can exacerbate flooding, so preparing to deal with future floods has to be tailored to the community. Recent floods provide case studies that can help cities everywhere manage the increasing risk.

• What Is A Flash Flood? A Civil Engineer Explains

  Flash flooding is a specific type of flooding that occurs in a short time frame after a precipitation event — generally less than six hours. It often is caused by heavy or excessive rainfall and happens in areas near rivers or lakes, but it also can happen in places with no waterbodies nearby.

• Flood Maps Show U.S. Vastly Underestimates Contamination Risk At Old Industrial Sites

  In 2019, researchers at the U.S. GAO investigated climate-related risks at the 1,571 most polluted properties in the country, also known as Superfund sites on the federal National Priorities List. They found an alarming 60% were in locations at risk of climate-related events, including wildfires and flooding. As troubling as those numbers sound, our research shows that that’s just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

• Climate Change Is Making Flooding Worse: 3 Reasons The World Is Seeing More Record-Breaking Deluges

  Although floods are a natural occurrence, human-caused climate change is making severe flooding events like this more common. In mountainous regions, three effects of climate change in particular are creating higher flood risks: more intense precipitation, shifting snow and rain patterns and the effects of wildfires on the landscape.

• Call For Proposals: Project Accelerator Applications Are Now Open

  WaterNow’s Project Accelerator provides bandwidth and support to help communities get these types of projects off the ground. Open to cities, towns, utilities, and other public entities with responsibility for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater, the Accelerator provides selected projects with about 250 hours of pro-bono support.