by Tom Barrett

Recognizing sustainability as merely reducing energy waste, recycling, or conserving water is a common misconception. In truth, the greatest impact on the environment you can make is right in your own backyard.

Environmentally responsible landscaping is one of the very few activities that can have a positive impact on the environment as opposed to the other measures that are commonly thought of when trying to minimize waste and pollution. Trees planted around a home can reduce air conditioning usage by 30%. A single tree creates oxygen, filters the air, purifies storm water, and sequesters carbon, a significant factor in global warming.

Storm water is the single largest source of water pollution in America today. Dirt, grease, grime, oils from our roads, salts, fertilizers, and pesticides all flow into our local waterways from storm water rushing off our landscapes onto our roads and into our streams. Keeping rainwater on your property prevents it from flowing into the storm water system. Filtering rainwater through sustainable landscape designs like rain gardens, creates a natural purification system for rainwater run-off and significantly reduces the volume of water flooding into the storm water system.

The process of rainwater becoming a storm water pollutant is a quick one. Rainwater comes down from the sky clean.  As clean as it can possibly be.  When it hits our structures; homes, buildings, streets, etc., it washes away the pollutants on the surface of these structures and in our landscapes, rushing the contaminants straight to the most available drain. The storm drains in most cities across the US flow straight into their sewer system.  As the rainwater cleans our surfaces naturally, all the pollutants and contaminates are condensed. As they condense, they are flushed through the streets and met with everyone else’s contaminants. The final destination for this run-off is the closest storm drain which then empties into the sewer system.  The pollutants already existing in the sewer systems are then compounded by the new rush of contaminants, creating an alarmingly toxic situation.

When these contaminants collect in the sewer system, it becomes a money issue.  The city has to spend tax dollars detoxifying and chemically treating the storm water as sewage.  By keeping the rainwater out of the storm system (and subsequently out of the sewer system) your tax dollars can be spent on things other than sewer water treatment.

By creating natural filters through which our rainwater can flow, we are in essence helping to remove the contaminants, and reducing the speed and volume in which the water runs to the storm drains. By choosing to create a rain garden or other environmentally responsible landscape solution, we can reduce the contaminants that collect in the sewer system, and make a significant impact on a cleaner and healthier environment.

About Tom Barrett:

Tom Barrett the owner of Green Water Infrastructure and an accomplished corporate growth and change agent with over thirty years of landscape industry experience.   Tom’s leadership experience, holding executive level positions, drives corporate revenue growth through change and innovation for business start-ups, corporate expansions, and divisional turnarounds.

Tom Barrett has been delivering energetic, dynamic presentations and training for over twenty years.  These presentations empower people to become masters of change rather than victims of circumstance by developing tools for transformational thinking.  For more information, please visit www.thinkgwi.com

About Green Water Infrastructure:

Green Water Infrastructure is a consulting company that integrates water resources for sustainable site development. Their goal is to utilize one hundred percent of the on-site water resources at a site. Green Water saves communities money by combining green infrastructure with gray infrastructure and new technology with existing technology to create sustainable growth — environmentally and socially. For your green infrastructure needs please contact Tom Barrett at (317) 674-3494 or on the web at tom.barrett@jtbarrett.com.