Green beats concrete - Colorado Springs Gazette

As Colorado Springs begins to address its backlog of drainage improvements, elected officials should keep an open mind about alternatives to the concrete-lined ditches that are so prevalent throughout the city.

Ah, drainage! The topic is so boring, yet so critical.

The city?s traditional approach has been to build concrete canals. They?re ugly, looking like someone?s idea of an anti-tank barrier for the new millennium.

Besides attracting skateboarders, the main advantages of the concrete ditches are that they allow developers to use more land, building right up to the canals, and that water can be drained away quickly.

The downsides? Well, making the water move faster is not always an advantage because it simply creates another problem farther downstream.

And once you have the concrete walls, you lose the burrowing animals; then you lose the birds of prey. Trees and bushes don?t take root in the canals, except for when they fall into disrepair.

Concrete ditches don?t always provide the property protection they?re supposed to. In July, a concrete drainage canal in the Briargate collapsed under pressure from rainwater that came down all at once.

The gullywasher tossed heavy concrete slabs around easily and replacing the infrastructure is a $750,000 line item in Mayor Steve Bach?s 2013 budget.

At Wednesday night?s town hall meeting, Public Works Director Helen Migchelbrink said the city is pondering ?alternatives? to a concrete channel and there are various alternatives.

One answer is called ?green infrastructure.? According to a national group, the Center for Neighborhood Technologies, green infrastructure means the interconnected network of open spaces and natural areas, such as greenways, wetlands, parks, forest preserves and native plant vegetation, that naturally manages stormwater, reduces flooding risk and improves water quality.?

The idea is that where possible, you slow the runoff down and disperse it, using wetlands, which also tend to purify the runoff. Overall, the technique encourages wildlife and creates green spaces in the city.

City Council liaison Amiee Cox served on the Manitou Springs City Council a few years ago and recalled that ?one of the proposals had been to channelize Fountain Creek. I said ?no, no, no.? ?

Colorado Springs faces a similar choice on 31st Street, where an aging concrete channel has become a sediment-filled eyesore and does not drain as well as it once did.

Replacing it would be a big job, but when we do, it doesn?t have to only about protecting property.

We can probably afford some charm, too.

?

Listen to Barry Noreen on KRDO NewsRadio 105.5 FM and 1240 AM at 6:35 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. Contact him at 719-636-0363 or barry.noreen@gazette.com

?

Source: http://www.gazette.com/news/drainage-146444-city-concrete.html

brad miller chandler jones peyton hillis fletcher cox charlotte bobcats new york rangers nfl mock draft 2012