By Dave Majewski.
"Asphalt" is not necessarily a two word phrase placing blame.
This contaminated runoff is one of the most serious problems that plague Buffalo and Western New York. It not only jeopardizes our natural waterways and our health, it puts increased strain and cost on the entire system and on engineers that are tasked with managing water quality and quantity.
Asphalt paved parking lots also - by virtue of non-sustainable and destructive construction practices - create lost green spaces, erosion, and compaction throughout adjoining areas, which each promote runoff.
Parking lots are an economic necessary "evil." We must have them and they must be paved for economic reasons. Permeable paving is a doable option that certainly works - but it is seldom cost effective on mid- to large-scaled projects and it requires more maintenance. Permeable systems don't offer the green spaces.
Asphalt parking lots in Buffalo, at a size of approximately 30,000 square feet that may accommodate approximately 100 cars, will generate approximately 75,000 gallons of UNTREATED and CONTAMINATED storm water runoff from each parking lot. This 30,000 square foot figure is a small parking lot.
You can use this general rule of thumb: 10,000 square feet of surface area generates approximately 25,000 gallons of untreated runoff, annually, in Buffalo and WNY.
In asphalt parking lots, the following contaminants exist and are untreated as they flow in to our combined storm sewer systems:
Petroleum or tar from the asphalt itself, including the top sealer;- Petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL's);
- Windshield washer fluid and deicing agents (the label indicates, this product "cannot be made non-toxic");
- Salts from winter salting and plowing;
- Radiator fluids, including anti-freeze fluids and other corrosives;
- Pesticides from adjoining green spaces, (e.g., neighbor's green spaces that get treated seasonally);
- Pet feces from adjoining green spaces;
- Rust debris falling off the undersides of many vehicles;
- Alot of chrome debris from bumpers and wheels;
Many diesel and gasoline leaks; and, - Unknown chemical debris from runoff that is generated in the back of pickup and small commercial truck beds as rains flood these beds and the trucks drive off.
Here is a helpful Scientific American article referencing an EPA study. The US EPA has done several studies on this topic and there are many other independent and governmental links with very good information.
Here is a link to a lecture given on this topic in September of 2009.
There are a number of ways to mitigate or eliminate contaminated runoff from asphalt parking lots. Here are some ways that are best if designed and specicified prior to construction:
- Low Impact Development (LID) - Green Parking lots with bio-retention (BR) cells (257 Lafayette), which also gives you the option to add attractive, ecological and functional green spaces. These can be educational and benefit the community. They offer the incentive of meeting quicker board approval and inspections expediting.
- Green BR Cell Islands in Parking Lots - The contaminated runoff is intentionally directed in to green spaces that are designed and engineered to accommodate this impure runoff. It purifies the runoff up to 99 percent and can drastically mitigate and even eliminate any runoff in to the combined system.
This story originally appeared on the GrowWNY website, a hyperlocal source of information about living green--powered by more than 150 organizations collaborating for our regional environment.
Reprinted by permission.
mitigate? hell, just start getting rid of them. decide that cities work better when they are designed for people, businesses, cafes, shops, services, concerts, festivals, and strolling rather than mass automobile storage.
The author lives in the real world, offering advice that people can use.
If you lined up 100 people in order of 'believe the car should be gone...' to 'I have 3 Hummers and I wish I had more...' you realize you'd be in about the 1%, with a few percent willing to listen, and probably the remaining 90% wondering what planet you dropped from.
I know, that makes you smarter than them.
Right, because people never ever change, ever. I must have been dreaming when I thought I read about how Copenhagen went in 30 or so years from a car-dominated city just like Buffalo to a place where 75% of downtown commutes are by bicycle, just by building infrastructure to encourage bicycle trips.
A bit loser to home, Portland, Oregon and New York City have had similar though less dramatic shifts in transportation choices.
People will by and large choose the easiest path of least resistance. If you build parking lots and 6 lane streets, they will drive a car. If you build protected bicycle lanes and calm motor traffic they will ride a bicycle. If you build a frequent and easily-understood network of clean and safe public transportation, they will use transit.
You get the behaviors that you encourage.
Yes, if there only were lots of bike lanes in Buffalo, residents of Amherst and Williamsville would be biking downtown, especially from November to March.
What a joke.
If you developed bike lanes, you'd get more people biking than you do now. That's the point. And if public transportation were developed along with reducing parking, you'd get more people using that, as well, which leads to less demand for parking spaces downtown. I don't see why this is a joke...
The climate of Copenhagen is moderated by the surrounding seas.The winter daily high temperature in Copenhagen seldom falls below freezing. Measurable snowfall is not a common occurrence during the winter months. It's comparing apples to oranges.
I was recently reading about Copenhagen as well. They started, around 1960, to reduce parking capacity by 2-3% each year. This way, alternative transportation could be developed concurrently, and people's mindsets and behaviors could be reshaped gradually. Along with reducing parking, they began closing small sections of streets off to cars. Businesses fought this tooth and nail. Now they have a large pedestrian mall, visited by tens of thousands of people every day (winter included), and which is also a big tourist attraction.
So where are you going with that comment? Are you suggesting that we try the same thing in Buffalo? Don't forget they already tried closing off a street in Buffalo to make a pedestrian zone and we all know how that worked out.
Wow, tight argument. Can you please think about the time when they decided to shut off Main St? They closed Main St down to traffic at a time when there were fewer people living downtown than today. The Copenhagen approach was to gradually shutdown traffic in a city that already had a large population living downtown.
Well, there are more people living downtown (although still a small number) and the only new retail that opened up down there recently that I can recall is a Wilson Farms. And the suburban malls and plazas are still up and running. The point I'm arguing is that if they were to close up Main Street today , it would still wind up in the same sad state it's in now, since the original issues have never been addressed.
Closing off Main Street wasn't working out because a) public transportation wasn't developed into a viable alternative to the car, and b) there wasn't much to entice a person to go there.
Having said that, I still think it is a bad idea to reopen it to cars. Get good stuff down there and improve (extend) the subway. How many people rode the train to Powder Keg???
It's kind of apples to oranges trying to compare Copenhagen to Buffalo. Copenhagen is the capital city of a wealthy northern European country. It is the cultural, political, and economic center of Denmark, in addition to being at least a minor world city. Buffalo is an old industrial city trying to find its way in a new world. It is located in a country where people are free to move to other areas for work or for myriad other reasons. If you're Danish and want to live where things happen, you try to live in Copenhagen or its surrounding area. Buffalo on the other hand has to compete against other parts of the United States that offer many attractions for people and business, and it is a battle that we're fighting poorly.
What we need to be doing is trying to find solutions that will work for Buffalo. If we tried to restrict cars downtown like they did in Copenhagen, all that'd happen is that the it would give another reason to go elsewhere for shopping/dining. I'm not sure what we could do to change Buffalo's course, though.
Picture this--
*There are desirable shops and restaurants and other things to do downtown.
*Public transportation is fast, readily accessible, comfortable, cheap, and safe.
*Parking downtown is a major hassle--spots are scarce, and you have to pay a premium to use them.
Are you telling me that you would not go downtown simply because you couldn't drive there?
You hit the nail on the head when you said "Buffalo is an old industrial city trying to find its way in a new world." Building everything around cars is the old way. We need to reinvent ourselves and move in a new direction--one where sustainability drives planning.