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Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment
EPA recently supported the City of Emeryville, California in the development of "Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment." Emeryville, which is a suburb of San Francisco, has worked for over a decade on reclaiming, remediating and redeveloping the many brownfields within its borders. These efforts sparked a successful economic rebound. The city did not stop there, and decided to harness the redevelopment for better environmental outcomes, in particular that related to stormwater runoff. The city faced several challenges, including a high water table, clay soils, and few absorbent natural areas among the existing and redeveloped industrial sites.
The guidelines, and an accompanying spreadsheet model, were developed to make as much use of redevelopment sites as possible for handling stormwater. The main strategies fell into several categories:
- the reduction of the parking footprint by way of shared parking, making the best use of on-street parking and pricing strategies
- landscape design features, such as tree preservation and planting, use of structural soils, bio-retention and bio filtration strategies
- water storage and harvesting through cisterns and rooftop containers
- other strategies to handle or infiltrate water on development and redevelopment sites.
The Guidelines also include a spreadsheet model for sizing on-site BMPs.
For more information, please contact Diana Keena (dkeena@ci.emeryville.ca.us) via email or by phone at (510) 596-4335
Download Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment (PDF) (58 pp, 4.2 MB, About PDF).
Download the Stormwater Sizing Worksheet (Excel spreadsheet)