Impermeable Surfaces
If asked “What is the biggest threat facing humanity,” what would you say? Wildfires? Extreme Weather Events? Floods? Mass migration? Drought? Climate change? Mass Extinction? Our refusal to deal with our big issues? Ennui? If I had to pick, I’d say impermeable surfaces makes the top ten list.
“Really?” you reply, somewhat incredulous. Let me explain.
Impermeable surfaces, a/k/a impervious surfaces do not allow water to pass through them so when you combine superstorms with a whole lot of asphalt (or macadam, depending on where you’re from), you end up with a whole lot of property damage like:
Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans, 2005) – 2.5 billion in water infrastructure damage;
Tropical Storm Sandy (New Jersey and New York, 2012) – $3billion in damage to NYC’s water/wastewater treatment plants alone.
Hurricane Harvey (Houston, 2017) – over $125 billion total costs with damage to more than 800 wastewater treatment plants and 50 drinking water systems.
You’ve probably noticed that climate change is among the hot topics in our 24/7 news cycle. I’m not going to go into whether it’s real — 99% of scientists agree that it is so why are we still questioning it (a convo for another day) — but the truth is, 100-year storm events are more frequent then every hundred years these days, likely due to climate change, and now they’re starting to bunch up on us as you probably noted from the three just mentioned.
In addition:
- In the last 100 years, the earth lost 50% of the world’s wetlands;
- Major port cities like Houston (founded June 5, 1837), and Philadelphia (founded October 27, 1682) were built on marshes, swamp, and forested land, areas that used to hold flood waters;
- wetlands and permeable surfaces provide $23 billion in storm protection each year in U.S. alone.
Houston has no formal zoning code, meaning developers get to build wherever and whenever. If you’ve ever driven in Houston, it’s one long traffic light, miles of pavement and highways and byways with nary an open green space in sight. So when it rains, and rains hard, the water has no where to go because the pavement is blocking its return to groundwater.
Instead, it skitters along the sidewalk looking for the low spots, ultimately finding the streams and rivers until those back up like a basement built in a flood plain without a sump pump and then where does the water go? Well, to the streets, of course. And that’s when it becomes an emergency.
Green infrastructure can help avoid this scenario because it can: control flooding; improve water quality; act as a wildlife nursery; provide buffering from winds and storms; provide recreation and tourism opportunities; hold onto carbon dioxide to slow its release into the atmosphere; and its nice to look at!
Want to move from impermeable surfaces like highways and driveways to pervious ones like rain gardens; green roofs; bioswales; retention basins; and pollinator gardens? Instructions abound on the internet or you can email me and I’ll send you step-by-step instructions.
Let’s keep water off the roads and in the rivers where it belongs. Where you can, switch out those impermeable surfaces in your yard for something green and growing. The benefits to you and the planet, over time, will be enormous.
pamlazos 4.10.19
Green Life Blue Water 
I’m I mentioned this some time ago, but Magic School Bus actually covered this very thing when it talked about wetlands near the town. The town board was going to approve a mall bulldozing the swamp, and all the science kids learned being bug-size wasn’t winning the day…until a big storm came! The town almost flooded, but then people saw the wetlands actually took on the brunt of the water, thereby saving the town. Hooray!
And for some reason my lawnmower repair man is a hardcore evolutionist who doesn’t believe in climate change because “it’s only been a hundred years. The earth is BILLIONS of years. It’s all just cycles. People should stop worrying!”
I have a feeling you would have punched the guy.
Lawnmower works, at least!
Ahem.
How are you? 🙂
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😂🤣😂 Well, at least he’s not a scientist in the Trump administration, Jean. I’ve been working in wetlands, enforcing the Clean Water Act for the last two decades and wetlands do not get the credit they deserve on any level because the regular person doesn’t understand why they’re important. It’s sad that the natural sciences have been bred out of school curriculum. Your lawn mower guy is just a product of an incompletion education and alternate facts. Maybe he’s a flat earther, too.
And I am taking a short blogging break after last month, but I realize that blogging everyday is like working out. 💪 🏋️ It improves performance. So maybe I’ll return to that although it’s tough to balance with the rest of my life and I do want to get back to my novel. 😘
How about you? Will you have the summer semester off with time to devote to your novel?
Is Magic School Bus a series in PBS or am I misremembering?
Have a groovy day. 🥰
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Hellooooo! Yup, Lily Tomlin did Miss Frizzle for the series on PBS ages ago. There’s a resurrected version on Hulu or something, but we don’t have any streaming services, so whatevs–library time!
Yeah, I have no clue about what’s all mixin’ in that guy’s head, but he sure knows his lawnmowers. 🙂
Enjoy your break! I’ve liked having all these great interviews to share–I didn’t have to come up with posts. Now I have to start exercising MY post-writing muscles. 🙂
Nope. Teaching this summer, and I’m back in the running for fulltime which would start in July if I get it. No rest for the wicked. 🙂
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😂😂😂I don’t think I’ve seen it, or only in passing but somehow I know of it. Good luck on getting the full time position!🙌👌
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Thanks!
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Amazing! Not living in the city, this isn’t an issue I face when the storms come. (I’m more concerned about the winter crops drowning when out-of-season storms arrive like they have this month.) Perhaps not pretty, but we’re allowing the grass to grow through the brick paving running from the gate to the garage (we live at an incline) to help stop the river that’s created with heavy rains: the short grass actually helps and I think the ants breaking through is a great thing — but then I’m a writer and think differently than most people 🙂
Ronel visiting from the A-Z Challenge with Music and Writing: Imagine
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Oh, you should think about putting in a little rain garden, Ronel. 😘
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What an excellent series of posts this is. The issue of how and where we live is something it’s easy to forget. If only our local government could manage to balance the need for housing with a recognition of the issues and solutions you raise. Here in our county, fields on the outer margins of the flood plain are already stripped of topsoil waiting for the diggers to begin excavating for large housing estates.
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Ah, don’t get me started on large housing estates. They’re eating up all the most fertile farmland in the country where I live in Central PA.😩
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The ruining of fertile farmland is another topic I get hot under the collar about, too.
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Because we can’t eat money. 💰
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Very interesting Pam – I am gaining a lot of insight with your A-Z challenge.
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Thank you, my friend. :0)
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This is an excellent post. Everything really is interconnected.
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Thank you, Robert.
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I agree – I can’t imagine what US built up cities are like, it’s bad enough here and we are much smaller and have green belts and parks everywhere. I imagine depression is a very real issue in such places too.
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I think so, Pauline. Depression is really on the rise in the States, but there are other contributing factors as well.
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Yes, I understand.
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😞
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Before I read this impermeable surfaces would not have come to mind as one of the most significant threats to humanity. Thanks for the enlightenment.
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Thanks, Ken. 😘
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Excellent Pam thank you. A little imagination and determination to avert further disasters would go a huge way. Of course urban areas are more concentrated than rural ones which is why in part the disasters are even bigger in terms of lives lost and damage done and $ lost … yes please, email me .. though I can also look. Roofs and gardens are being built .. veg on sidewalks so people can help themselves if in need and so on 🙂
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I’ll send you out little rain garden how-to when I get home.🥰
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