Saturday, December 18, 2010

Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes

Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes

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Last week, I spent two days in Buffalo, NY, at the Clean Water Network Conference, Smart, Green, and Clean: 21st Century Water Management in the Great Lakes. The meeting revolved around what environmental NGOs can do to promote green infrastructure in the Great Lakes basin. Green infrastructure refers to the use of natural, sustainable systems in land-use planning. Methods include green roofs, rain water harvesting, bio-retention, manufactured wetlands, rain barrels and rain gardens. These methods can be implemented in back yards, but also on a municipal scale that can help reduce the need for traditional gray infrastructure, non-environmental methods, like detention basins, wastewater treatment facilities and stream and river channeling. Basically, by using green infrastructure we let the planet's natural systems keep water clean, flooding to a minimum and create habitats rich in biodiversity.
The conference sessions were generally broken into "Top down" and "Bottom up" approaches to implementing green infrastructure to manage municipal water. Top down approaches included local and federal laws and policies that reinforce the Clean Water Act and fund green infrastructure. The bottom up speakers talked about places that have gone beyond traditional methods to build and encourage the use of green infrastructure.
These two approaches really helped see where there are problems with the on-the-ground implementation that could be helped by changes in policy, and where there was policy that needed the help of public support. There are barriers to building Green infrastructure that I had never thought of, like the permit process. It might take a few days to get a permit lay a big pipe, but it may take weeks to get a permit to lay the same pipe using a green method because green methods are not always approved in a lot of city codes. Outdated city codes are a barrier to installing green infrastructure and updating them is clearly a local policy issue.
But there are also barriers to creating green infrastructure that have less to do with policy and more to do with public perception. At a meeting a few weeks ago, a woman was talking about a rain garden they installed on city property. There were some very vocal opponents to this "ugly"-a.k.a. natural-planting. These opponents organized a petition and got the city to take the garden out.
While there is much research, development and implementation happening now in alternative energy, green infrastructure and other green living sectors, I wonder if we have a robust enough public outreach capacity to build the public support that is needed to implement the necessary infrastructure changes for the Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes are home to 20% of the world's surface fresh water, but with this wealth comes complacency. Few people probably know what type of sewer system their city or town uses, or where the water that falls onto their street ends up. We need to make infrastructure part of the average citizen's life. Topics like sewage treatment are not pretty, but talking about them now could prevent raw sewage from overflowing into our local rivers later. We must stop putting band-aids on gray infrastructure when we know there are better, cheaper, more ecologically friendly methods we can use instead. To do this, we will need champion policy-makers and an informed public.


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Alan Maki's picture

A little off the Great Lakes topic but about water...

By the way, I get my drinking water, along with hundreds of other people, from an artesian well in "Lady Slipper Park" in Williams.
This is from Minnesota Public Radio and was on the Grand Forks Herald's web site... something to consider when talking about "green" and infrastructure:
Published November 04 2009
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/139742/ Failing Williams sewage plant threatens Lake of the Woods
A sewage treatment plant in Williams, Minn., near Lake of the Woods is failing and threatens to dump thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the big international lake.
WILLIAMS, Minn. — A sewage treatment plant in a small northern Minnesota town is failing and threatens to dump thousands of gallons of raw sewage into Lake of the Woods.
The treatment plant is only nine years old. Replacing it will cost $1.6 million and city officials say they can't afford to fix the problem.
About 200 people live in Williams, just a few miles from Lake of the Woods. There's a gas station, a bar, a post office and a sewage treatment plant that was built in 2000.
The plant was designed to last a minimum of 40 years, but the tank that holds the raw sewage is heavily corroded and starting to leak. According to engineers, a major leak could happen any day.
"You can see where it's starting to come through," said Leonard Cole as a he examined discolored spots on the tank where moisture is seeping through the corroded metal.
Cole operates the sewage treatment plant. In fact, he is the Williams Public Works Department.
"It works good, It's just going to heck," said Cole as he pointed out corroded areas.
That's a big problem for Williams.
Mayor Nancy Jewell said the sewage plant construction was funded by federal loans and the city has 31 years of loan payments left on a sewage treatment plant that needs to be replaced.
"No one wants to admit responsibility for it. So it's like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place," Jewell said. "We're responsible for it and we just don't know what to do. We've been pulling our hair out trying to find a way to solve the problem and no one wants to help us."
The aluminum tank is 60 feet long, 20 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Engineers found the one-fourth inch thick aluminum walls are now less than one-eighth of an inch thick because of corrosion.
The city contends faulty material is to blame. The engineering firm that designed the plant thinks chemicals the city added to the treatment contributed to the corrosion.
The Minneapolis firm that designed the plant 10 years ago said it recommended a steel tank with corrosion coating, but the manufacturer persuaded the city to use aluminum.
The city recently hired a consulting engineer who thinks the corroded tank could last two years, but is more likely to fail much sooner.
One option is coating the inside of the tank to stop the corrosion, but engineers think the corrosion might be too advanced and the tank too weakened to repair. Replacing the treatment plant will cost about $1.6 million.
Consulting Engineer Tim Korby is concerned that if the tank fails, some 50,000 gallons of raw sewage a day will flow into a nearby creek which flows into Lake of the Woods.
"We're telling the state it is going to fail," Korby said. "Are we going to do something now or wait until it fails and contaminates Lake of the Woods? There's ample funds in the state and the feds to do projects like this. It's a matter of everyone coming together and saying this is a priority. We want to protect Lake of the Woods the water and the fisheries there."
It's unclear how a sewage spill would affect Lake of the Woods. Neither the city nor the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has done an analysis of what would happen in the event of a large sewage discharge.
The MPCA approved the plans for the Williams sewage treatment plant, but their only role is to examine whether the plant satisfies wastewater treatment requirements. According to agency officials, it does not tell engineering firms how to build treatment plants or what materials to use.
MPCA Clean Water Revolving Fund Coordinator Bill Dunn said the agency has engineers examining the problem.
"I think we share the concern that this is a very serious issue that needs to be resolved in a timely basis," Dunn said. "It may be wise to also take a longer term perspective to determine whether this type of facility is really the best fit for the community in the long run."
The state Department of Employment and Economic Development has emergency funds for small cities, but Dunn said it's not clear if Williams meets the criteria to qualify for those funds. He said the project ranks low on the MPCA statewide priority list for funding in part because it's a relatively new facility.
The city can also seek another federal loan to pay for repairs or replacement of the treatment plant. But that would push city sewer rates to more than $100 a month and Mayor Nancy Jewell said some residents can't afford the current $40 a month fee.
The mayor is kept awake at night thinking about what might happen to the small town.
"People are saying what are we going to do if it springs a leak? And what do you tell them? We have no answer for them," Jewell said. "If it springs a leak it's going to go out to Lake of the Woods and there's going to be a lot of unhappy people. If they start leaking are we going to get MPCA up here on our case? Are we going to have big fines? I have no idea."
The mayor might get answers to some of those questions next month. Federal, state and local officials plan to meet to talk about a short-term solution for Williams and how to pay for it.
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Information from: Minnesota Public Radio News, http://www.mpr.org


Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
WarroadMinnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell phone: 651-587-5541

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Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
Phone: 218-386-2432
Blog: h