Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2011 - (Page 20)

INNOVATION The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act mandates that every city with combined sewer overflows reduce or eliminate these damaging overflows into our nation’s waterways. Green City, Clean Waters is the first policy of its kind in the United States to rely extensively upon green infrastructure to address this mandate. Philadelphia’s sewer system is comprised of about 60 percent combined sewer infrastructure, from which an estimated 15 billion gallons of combined sewer effluent overflows into our rivers and streams every year. PWD is targeting a 33 percent reduction of impervious surfaces within the combined sewer area — to allow stormwater to infiltrate or to be detained locally —substantially preventing overflows. Given the variety of contextual conditions in Philadelphia, a range of green stormwater tools will be needed to help meet this goal, including green roofs. “Philadelphia is a city with a rich history of preserving and protecting its waterways,” says Philadelphia’s mayor Michael Nutter. “In the mid-1800s, Fairmount Park was created to protect the City’s water supply because the leaders at that time recognized the vital connection between a green city and clean water. Today’s stormwater management challenges call for innovative and sustainable alternatives where green roofs will play an important role toward my goal of making Philadelphia the greenest city in the nation.” For every acre of green roof in Philadelphia, a million gallons of stormwater is managed annually. Today, we have over 10 acres of green roofs, with an additional 10 acres of planned projects: this is reducing stormwater pollution by many millions of gallons per year. Since 2006, the City’s stormwater regulations have required developers of large projects to manage the first one-inch of stormwater runoff. As a result, many developers are considering use of green roofs at the earliest stages of development planning and there has been a significant increase in green roof development. “Green roofs have a very practical and direct application in helping Philadelphia manage stormwater to reduce com- SUMMARY OF PHILADELPHIA'S CURRENT & PLANNED GREEN ROOF INVENTORY SUMMARY SITES AREA (SQ FT) ACRES Not Started Under Construction Constructed TOTAL 19 14 52 85 293,048 166,644 459,368 919,060 6.73 3.83 10.55 21.10 bined sewer overflows. Assume every green roof in the city will manage roughly 35 of the 42 inches of rain fall per year. This translates to over 950,000 gallons of stormwater runoff managed or eliminated per year, per acre of green roof,” says Dr. Christopher Crockett, deputy commissioner of Planning and Environmental Services. Over the past several years, Philadelphia has implemented a system to track green roof construction, evaluate and analyze green roof trends, and capture benefits and lessons learned. In addition to stormwater management, demonstrated benefits by the green roofs developed in Philadelphia include: energy savings, reduction of heat island effect and educational and aesthetic advantages. Tracking of green roof projects and analysis of the data in relation to density, land use and concurrent development activity has provided useful data. In a brief example, PWD found that increases to green roof area are primarily correlated to high-development activity, but not necessarily density. High-development activity and high density have not been closely linked in the past years in Philadelphia. GREEN ROOFS BY GEOGRAPHICAL AREA WITHIN PHILADELPHIA NEIGHBORHOOD COUNT BUILT AREA (SQ FT) PLANNED/UNDER CONSTRUCTION COUNT AREA (SQ FT) COUNT TOTAL AREA (SQ FT) Northern Liberties/Fishtown Center City University City South Philadelphia North Philadelphia Northwest Philadelphia West Philadelphia Northeast Philadelphia TOTAL 12 11 7 6 5 5 4 2 52 100,062 127,072 56,671 6,438 89,564 47,857 23,620 8,084 459,368 SPRING 2011 4 9 4 3 4 3 4 2 33 72,503 137,729 43,818 41,403 34,461 10,062 62,383 57,333 459,692 16 20 11 9 9 8 8 4 85 172,565 264,801 100,489 47,841 124,025 57,919 86,003 65,417 919,060 20 LIVING ARCHITECTURE MONITOR

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2011

Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2011
Contents
Adaptation Through Innovation
Award-Winning Leader
Living Building Challenge Update
On the Roof With...
The Black Arts
Green Walls
Stormwater Policy
Root Repellent Standards
Growing Media
Green Building Codes
New Corporate Members
The GRP Turns Two
Professional Calendar
My First Year as a GRP

Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2011

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