Week #3 Progress report 4/17/13

During week 3 the group shared our research from week 2, and continued to research. The research was broken up research in to specific topics.  Each member group was assigned a topic.  Molly and Paulina looked into water quality and use, Stephanie researched making roofs into public spaces, Craig looked up storm-water collection, and Yosep learned about solar panels.Splitting the topics up allowed the group to take a more focused approach with the research.

After initially familiarizing ourselves with green roofs, their construction, and benefits, we began to use engineering databases with professional, scholarly resources. We made use of Knovel, for plumbing and environmental design handbooks, as well as Proquest, ASCE Library, and Google Scholar for a variety of studies including heat islands in cities, the insulation effect a green roof gives, the influence of different variables in construction, soil type, and plant type. State and federal websites helped us learn about safety standards regarding rainwater collection, and the green infrastructure projects going on in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has is place a 25 year plan called Green City, Clean Waters. It's actually a uniquely eco friendly approach for the city to deal with its storm water run off issues. Basically when it rains, the water throughout the city collects all types of pollutants from animal waste, to nitrates and car grease. This water cannot go into the ground because cities are made up of mostly impervious surfaces, like concrete sidewalks, roads, and gravel roofs. The contaminated water enters what are often combined sewer systems, which will release the water into nearby tributaries, dams, and rivers. This pollutes sources of water, and cam even contaminate drinking supply.

Rather than overhauling the sewer system of an entire city, the focus of Green City, Clean Waters is to use green infrastructure to address these long term issues, which need to be dealt with as the pipes age. Many key strategies have been using stormwater planters, to catch water in soil before it reaches the sewers, replacing roads with a porous pavement that allows water to travel into the soil below, implementing green roofs to decrease the amount of impervious surfaces, and implement rain barrels or cisterns in both homes and businesses. Since the start of the program, runoff has been reduced by 1.5 billion gallons annually.