The Only Stormwater Management Resources You Will Ever Need

We already explained why Philadelphia Water’s Green City, Clean Waters initiatives are setting examples for the rest of the nation. How can you stay on top of the latest and greatest stormwater initiatives?

Here’s a few of the innovative ways Philadelphia Water has used technology, guerilla marketing & social media to promote stormwater management tools.

3 of the Only Stormwater Management Resources You’ll Ever Need

1.  Philly Water Art and Green City, Clean Waters Signage

While green infrastructure is designed to play a bigger role in the daily life of neighborhoods than gray infrastructure, it also tends to blend in. Whole blocks are transformed into green stormwater tools through the use of structures such as street tree trenches, but unless you took part in a community meeting during planning, you might assume they were run-of-the-mill street trees.

To highlight Green City, Clean Waters projects, Philadelphia Water partners with groups like Mural Arts to create community art that enhances infrastructure. Some projects, like an upcoming mural planned for a vacant lot green infrastructure improvement along 55^th Street in West Philadelphia, differ little from standard Mural Arts works.

But we’ve also pioneered unique installations, such as Waterways, a temporary street art design by artist Eurhi Jones that used a series of vinyl tiles featuring local aquatic life as “stepping stones” to connect Manayunk residents to stormwater infrastructure at the new Venice Island Performing Arts and Recreation Center. You can read more about that work and see some cool drone footage of Venice Island online.

Another infrastructure highlighting project, launched in June, involves a network of 36 signs in 18 neighborhoods that call attention to Green City, Clean Waters tools and explain how they work. Using vibrant colors and easy to understand illustrations, the signs allow passersby to get a glimpse of the often hidden underground components of tools like rain gardens and tree trenches.

Each sign also uses quick-response (QR) codes and URLs to direct people to videos that explain the concepts behind seven common green stormwater tools. Check to see if there are Green City, Clean Waters signs near you.

2.   District Updates

Because community buy-in is an important part of our green infrastructure projects, we hold community meetings to get input from neighbors and to keep residents informed about the progress of individual installations.

Since people are often too busy to attend a meeting after work, we started a new blog project that documents updates provided at public meetings. You can read about recent meetings here at Phillywatersheds.org. We’ll also post links to meeting recaps on our Twitter and Facebook pages. 

3.  Credits Explorer App

In a similar vein, we also recently launched the Credits Explore app, which allows commercial property owners to explore the benefits of going green by virtually adding tools like green roofs and permeable pavement to their properties. The app, which Next City describes as “addictive,” shows how much stormwater each tool manages and how much property owners can save on stormwater bills, which are now based on how much impervious surface a property contains.

To further incentivize green infrastructure, we also provide assistance through the Greened Acres Retrofit Program and the Stormwater Management Incentives Program. Because Credits Explorer uses an open data approach, anyone can pop on there and start adding green tools to any commercial property in the city.

To keep up to date on more sustainability news from Philadelphia Water, keep an eye on our Philly Watersheds blog and follow us on Twitter.