E-Discuss SF: Urban Greening with Rain Gardens at Intersections
Thanks to California's AB-413 "daylighting" law, every intersection in the state now has a piece of public land where parking is banned within 20 feet of the crosswalk, which is mostly wasted and leads to more curb runoff and pollutants entering our waterways. Existing solutions such as red curbs don’t prevent unsafe parking. Plastic bollards and a stormwater pit on the side of a parking lot don’t help biodiversity, beauty, or urban heat islands.
But - Rain gardens at intersections can make engineers, biologists, and residents happy! This presentation will show how to turn those no-parking zones into rain gardens that soak up and filter stormwater, grow biodiverse pollinator habitat, cool streets, and calm traffic, without removing a single legal parking space.
With heavy rain events likely becoming more frequent, planning for reducing stormwater runoff as well as making intersections safer and more biodiverse is a win-win-win solution.
About the speakers:
Katharine Bierce is the founder of Sangha Strategies LLC, a marketing agency for sustainability, with a vision that the best marketing brings people together. Katharine’s career spans startups, Fortune 500 companies, and the nonprofit sector. She has 15 years of business and nonprofit management experience, is a PMP certified project manager (and Agile Scrum Master), and enjoys helping get the word out about things that matter.
Katharine serves on the Community Advisory Committee for Ava Community Energy and is active in several Bay Area sustainability groups.
Jorge Romero-Lozano, PE, LEED AP, PMP, is the Executive Director and Founder of Greening Projects. As a licensed civil engineer with a passion for planning, designing, and building green spaces, he provides the technical expertise and passion to envision potential green spaces and support neighborhoods, individuals, and other professionals who wish to improve their environments and engage their communities. Greening Projects’ vision is to create as much green space as possible within our urban environments.
Greening Projects’ Mission: We are dedicated professionals who provide consulting and other support services to create green, sustainable spaces within our urban environment. Our clients include community groups, as well as individuals, who wish to improve their neighborhoods and cities by enhancing the environment and engaging their communities. We assist them by providing professional services, such as planning, development, design, project and construction management
About E-Discuss:
E-Discuss is an informal potluck meetup of folks in sustainability with presentations on various topics. It started in dorm rooms at Stanford circa 2006 and has grown to a community of clean energy enthusiasts around the Bay.
Thanks to West Monroe for hosting!