There are so many ways that people living, working, going to school, & visiting the City can do to help our commitment to protecting and sustaining the health and vitality of the our waterways.

Depending on what type of user you are (Homeowners, Businesses, etc.), there can be particular tasks or applications that each user type can do. But many of our recommendations can be conducted by everyone.

What kind of a user are you?

Everybody
Homeowners
Businesses
Community Groups
Public and Private Institutions

What Everybody Can Do

Preventing Contamination

Vehicle Maintenance

By maintaining your car properly, you can protect our drinking water sources! Catching oil leaks, heavy metals, and toxic materials before they run onto the street prevents hazardous chemicals from draining into sewers.

Vehicle Washing

Think twice the next time you go to wash your car in your driveway, in the street, or on any impervious paving. Dirty water washes over the paving and goes directly into storm drains, whereas dirty water can infiltrate through pervious surfaces and have its contaminants naturally filtered out by the soil.

Winter De-icing

Using salt as a way to melt snow and ice actually saturates and destroys a soil’s natural structure. This results in more waterway erosion, in turn damaging and killing vegetation and endangering freshwater ecosystems and fish.

Making Landscapes Work Harder

Tree Planting

Aside from contributing to a more beautiful landscape in your neighborhood, trees have many benefits. To name a few, their shade reduces heat in summer months, their mass act as a noise buffer, their roots filter contaminants from infiltrating water, and their leaves clean the air of pollutants.

Planters (Container Gardens)

Whether you want to enhance your green space or create one, planters offer aesthetically pleasing greenery in otherwise tightly confined urban areas. They reduce impervious cover while also providing a soil/plant mixture suitable for stormwater capture and treatment.

Creating a Wildflower Meadow

Are you looking for a low maintenance planting strategy that also protects biodiversity? Wildflower meadows made up of native species present excellent opportunities for stormwater management, groundwater infiltration, water quality treatment, and even flood control.

Caring for your Backyard Stream

A stream on your property can be a beautiful asset to enjoy if it’s taken care of. Trees and plants that grow in an established riparian zone not only provide shade for stream biodiversity but also slow runoff, controlling erosion, and filter out pollutants that would otherwise end up in the stream.

On-site Stormwater Management

Rain Gardens

Installing a rain garden on your property can enhance the aesthetic of your landscaping while effectively managing stormwater. A rain garden of native plants acts as a discrete basin for stormwater to slowly infiltrate, preventing large volumes from flowing directly into the nearest storm drain, creek or river.

Dry Wells

As a low maintenance stormwater management strategy that you can implement on-site, dry wells work similarly to rain gardens without the landscaping. They are small, excavated pits filled with stone or gravel that temporarily store runoff as well as diverted downspout volumes until it infiltrates the surrounding soil.

Infiltration Test

An infiltration test measures how quickly water can infiltrate and flow through the soil. This will help you determine in advance if the soil on your property is suitable for certain types of stormwater management measures, such as a dry well or rain garden.

Rain Barrels

An easy and effective way to collect and store stormwater runoff from your rooftop is to redirect downspout volumes into a temporary holding container called a rain barrel. Through detaining runoff , you’re simultaneously adding capacity to the city’s sewer system during rain events which reducing sewer overflows, as well as reusing this captured water for the irrigation of your lawns, gardens, window boxes or street trees!

What Public and Private Institutions Can Do

As a public or private institution that wants to make a difference in Your watershed, rallying participation and environmental stewardship can improve the health of your watershed's stormwater runoff dramatically.

PWD and our partners have developed A Guide to Stormwater Management on School Campuses that discuss what schools can do!