Ignorance is not just for dumb people :)

I was talking to a friend today about this idea I have for a company for a project we have to do in one of my classes. Fun stuff. Anyway, the "new" thing is green infrastructure. Google it, you'll actually find lots of stuff on it. Here's a site for you to check out, http://www.greeninfrastructurecenter.org/ , like I said, cool stuff. Anyway. I was babbling on and on about rain gardens and putting them in parking lots to slow down or even stop stormwater runoff, which is a HUGE, GIGANTIC problem here in Pittsburgh. Anyone heard of North Park? It used to be 12 foot deep, now is only 6 foot, or less, from all the sediment that has gone into the river and the lake. SO they drained it this year and are going to be dredging it. Uh, DUH, if you don't fix the problem you will have to just spend a couple more million to do it again in a few years. so dumb. anyway, back to talking to a friend. While i was babbling about rain gardens, she had this perplexed look on her face, and I didn't even notice. So when I finally shut up her questions was, "what IS a rain garden?" Doh!! my fault, you know those prof's you hated in college cause they talked way above you cause they forgot that you don't know all the crap in between. yeah, that was me :) So i'm going to back up a step and explain some stuff. Rain gardens: These are low areas that are made to catch water. They are planted with native plants that stand inundation of lots of water, and can stand a little drought. The idea of rain gardens is to NOT have to water them. If they are big enough you can put one or two trees in them, but they are usually full of flowers, grasses, and shrubs. Because they are lower than the rest of the area the water goes there, and can actually remain there long enough to infiltrate into the ground, back into the aquifer. And the gardens catch a huge amount of sediment and nutrients that are not good to have in the water. Now if I start talking about bioswales, swales, or something along those lines, here is that description. They are, more or less, vegetated ditches. If you don't know what a ditch is, I don't know what to tell you :) The plants that are put in the swales are the same as the ones that are put in a rain garden, for the same reason. The water needs to remian in that swale long enough to slow down, infiltrate, and or be filtered. Some swales are also more like large, wide ripples in the landscape, not so much a ditch. They are there to slow the water down so the river isn't overwhelmed by all the water that could go into it. So, there you go, if you already knew all that, sorry, but for those that didnt', I hope I helped out. Now onto another case study. Some of you might be thinking all she talks about is out west, well, duh, what do you expect, it's dry out there, of course they will be having water shortages. let me bring it a little closer to home. Ever heard of Atlanta? Yeah, as in Georgia. For the last 40 years, at least, the city of Atlanta has been illegally drawing water out of Lake Lanier, a reservoir on the Flint river. The river flows through Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. Areas in Alabama and Florida have been complaining for a long time that Atlanta has been taking too much of the water out of the reservoir and it needs to stop. So the states took the city to court and won. Now Atlanta, with it's population of 3.5 million, will have to find a new source of water. Levels in the lake have dropped significantly due to drought in the past couple of years. This affected Alabama's ability to naivgate teh river with boats and Florida has endangered species at the mouth of the river that it sued to protect under the Endangered species act. So, now there is a big problem and they are going to have to hurry and fix it.