Stomwater Management Handbook & Video Now Available

“Blue-Green Technologies: Integrated Practices to Manage Stormwater as an Asset” is now available from Great Swamp Watershed Association. Available for $40.00, plus $3.00 shipping and handling, the book is ideal for professional engineers, land use experts, and landscape architects.

The handbook was developed as a companion to the Watershed Association’s most recent video, “Doing Water Right: Managing Stormwater with Blue-Green technology”. It presents a holistic, comprehensive design approach to maintaining the natural water budget for a given site. The handbook goes into detail on the variety of ways to achieve a blue-green stormwater management approach, including: lessening the volume of runoff close to its source; improving the quality of runoff by filtering it through vegetation; maintaining groundwater recharge; detaining flood peaks; integrating a combination of management practices with existing features; and protecting and restoring streams as natural stormwater conveyance systems.

"Doing Water Right," the 24-minute videotape demonstrating the environmental benefits of blue-green technologies, is available for $10 plus $3 shipping.

Blue-green technologies are environmentally friendly ways to handle stormwater runoff, which is a principal contributor to water pollution, both in the Great Swamp watershed and across the country. The conventional way of dealing with stormwater is to channel it as quickly as possible, via gutters and culverts, to nearby waterways or wetlands. When this method is applied in developed areas, it carries large amounts of chemicals from roads and lawns into local streams.

Blue-green technologies apply alternative measures to allow stormwater to return to the water table instead of gathering up pollutants and carrying them into streams. Such alternatives are also often less expensive than traditional methods.

Both the handbook and the video examine applications of blue-green technology: a roof garden (or vegetated roof cover) in Philadelphia; bioretention basins in a Maryland subdivision; a porous-asphalt parking lot in Philadelphia; an expanded detention basin (or constructed wetland) at a Delaware mall; a transformed sump (or holding area) on Long Island; a reconstructed streambed in Massachusetts, etc.

The 170 page, full color handbook was written by Joachim Toby Tourbier, an expert on stormwater management practices who is a joint author and editor of handbooks on stormwater management, land reclamation, greenways, and planning guidelines and ordinances.

"Doing Water Right" was produced by Cross-Current Productions of Kittery, Maine. Funding for both the video and handbook were provided by the Schumann Fund for New Jersey; the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; the Fanny and Svante Knistrom Foundation; the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection; the Charles and Lucille King Family Foundation; and the Fund for New Jersey.

For more information, contact John Malay at johnm@greatswamp.org or at 973-966-1900.

To find out more about other Great Swamp Watershed Association Publications, click here.