Water industry representatives from across North America check out the Paseo Verde green roof in North Phila. Credit: Brian Rademaekers/Philadelphia Water.

Green City, Clean Waters is the biggest plan in the U.S. designed to manage stormwater with green infrastructure, and that means Philadelphia Water will take all the help it can get from developers who want to add value to their properties while also lessening the negative environmental impacts with green stormwater tools.

On October 8th, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, Chair of the Council Committee on the Environment, introduced a bill that would give the development community a new incentive to include one of the most talked about green infrastructure tools out there – green roofs.

Brown’s bill would allow for density zoning bonuses for developers who incorporate approved green roofs into building designs.

"As a City, we have been steadily increasing incentives to build green roofs, and it is working. Philadelphia is now the number three City in North America when it comes to green roof square footage, trailing only Washington, D.C. and Toronto, Canada; that is huge," Councilwoman Reynolds Brown said in statement released by her office.

Green roofs would have to meet Philadelphia Water's design standards to qualify for the density bonus, and Commissioner Howard Neukrug offered support for the new bill.

"We thank Councilwoman Reynolds Brown for helping to provide this added incentive that will create more green roofs in Philadelphia," said Neukrug. "Green roofs help to manage stormwater, keeping it from overwhelming our sewer system and polluting our rivers. This legislation will also help make green roofs more affordable and help create more jobs for our local green business community."

Under the current code, a 10,000 square foot lot in a Residential Multi Family Zoning District (RM-1) would be zoned for twenty dwelling units. If the developer added an approved green roof to the design, the same lot would be zoned for 27 units.

In a Neighborhood Commercial Mixed Zoning District (CMX-2 and CMX-2.5) a 10,000 square foot building is currently zoned for 19 dwelling units and under the new law, would be zoned for 27 units, provided they install an approved green roof.

A green roof is defined by the ordinance as “a treatment to a rooftop that supports living vegetation and includes a synthetic, high quality waterproof membrane, drainage layer, root barrier, soil layer, and vegetation layer.”

Philadelphia would join a small but growing number of cities offering density bonuses for green roofs including San Diego, Portland, Ore., Chicago, and Austin. The bill will be referred to the Committee on the Rules, Chaired by Councilman Bill Greenlee, who expects a fall 2015 hearing.

To see a full copy of the bill, please click here.

When we started the 25-year Green City, Clean Waters plan in 2011, the idea was that we could better manage our stormwater and reduce combined sewer overflows by leading with green infrastructure, as opposed to only using gray infrastructure, and that it would also have additional social and economic benefits. We call it our “triple bottom line" approach. While the environmental benefits (good news—we’re on track to meet our environmental targets for year five of the plan!) and economic benefits are quantifiable, the social benefits are harder to measure. But a recent study, published this January in the American Journal of Public Health, indicates that the green stormwater infrastructure we’ve installed in Philadelphia does, indeed, have social benefits as well.

The study, led by Michelle Kondo, formerly a postdoctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and now a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Philadelphia, looked at 52 green stormwater projects in Philadelphia and found consistent and statistically significant reductions in narcotic possession and manufacture, as well as burglaries near those sites.  

These impressive results caught the eye of the Inquirer’s Sandy Bauers, who featured the study in her regular GreenSpace column: 

[Kondo] and her colleagues, including Penn epidemiologist Charles Branas, who had studied vacant lots, compared the 52 sites with 186 similar areas where projects were planned but not yet built. They factored in socioeconomic data from the census, crime statistics, and health data.

Their results, published in January in the American Journal of Public Health, were an eyebrow-raiser. Between 2000 and 2012, incidents of drug possession at the project sites dropped by as much as 27 percent compared with the control sites.

As far as a half-mile away, "we saw a significant reduction," Kondo said.

The study controlled for a number of other factors—gentrification, general improvements in quality of life, etc.—that had occurred over the 12 years of the study and yielded a strong positive correlation between the presence of a Green City, Clean Waters project and incidents of drug possession. 

Clearly, there’s still more studying to be done so we can determine links to other improvements in overall quality of life measures and reductions in crime, but these initial results are very promising! Studies like this help demonstrate the return on investment for each individual green infrastructure project and that the triple bottom line approach is truly paying off! 

Penn State Public Media (PSPM), in collaboration with Fairmount Water Works   and The Penn State Center: Engaging Philadelphia is excited to announce a mini grant initiative, “Community Impact: Managing Water in Philadelphia.”
 
Request for Proposals
“Community Impact: Managing Water in Philadelphia”

Proposals Due by 5:00 p.m. EST, August 14, 2014

Grants made available with funding from the William Penn Foundation, will support projects within the Philadelphia region (Schuylkill and Delaware Watersheds) that combat water quality problems  using green infrastructure and which include an educational component.
 
Grants ranging from $500.00 to $2,000.00 will be awarded on a competitive basis to eligible applicants. Projects may  include, but are not limited to, local stream restoration projects, community rain garden or rain barrel installation projects, and green infrastructure projects that are implemented in a K-12 (and post high-school) environment . For more information about the grants or to apply, please visit: http://waterblues.org/rfp

“Community Impact: Managing Water in Philadelphia” mini grants are a component of Water Blues, Green Solutions, a public service media initiative. The centerpiece of Water Blues is a nationally distributed public television documentary produced by PSPM  that premiered in 2013. The mini grants initiative will help extend the impact of Water Blues. More information about this national initiative is available at: http://www.waterblues.org/.
 
**Please feel free to share this information with anyone that might be interested in applying for a grant via newsletters or  social media.

For more information, please contact:
Lindsey Faussette
Manager, Project Implementation
Penn State Public Media
lindseyf@psu.edu
814.863.5489

Image by Chelsea Scott

Saturday, October 5, Penn State students and volunteers helped restore two green stormwater infrastructure projects –a rain garden and a stormwater bumpout-- on Lancaster Avenue. “The two sites we worked on weren’t functioning properly. So we fixed them, prettied them up, mulched, planted — the whole shebang,” said Tommy McCann, an urban agriculture coordinator and horticultural educator at Penn State.

The idea for the volunteer day began when organizers from Penn State met with the Philadelphia Water Department to discuss possible partnerships and to tour stormwater infrastructure sites that PWD had plans to improve, including the rain garden and bumpout on Lancaster Ave. This cleanup day is part of a bigger initiative by Penn State Public Media to produce a documentary that tells the story of how cities acrossthe United States are learning to manage stormwater with green infrastructure. PennState plans to release the film, Water Blues Green Solutions, in late 2013.

Read more about PennState’s work on Lancaster Avenue and check out the preview for the Philadelphia segment of the Water Blues Green Solutions documentary.