Transcription
Rebekah Warren: When a major rainstorm hits Ann Arbor, we tend to think about the immediate problems – flooded streets, overwhelmed storm drains and perhaps water in our basements. But every drop of that stormwater is part of something much larger. Ann Arbor sits within the Huron River watershed, so what runs off our streets, parking lots and rooftops can ultimately make its way into the river. And with extreme rainfall becoming a growing challenge, the city of Ann Arbor is taking a new look at how the community manages stormwater, moving beyond simply trying to move water away as quickly as possible and towards a combination of traditional infrastructure and green infrastructure designed to capture and manage water where it falls. The city is currently finalizing a new comprehensive stormwater management plan. Here to talk about what it means, how it will work and what it could mean for Ann Arbor and the Huron River watershed is Jennifer Lawson, water quality manager for the city of Ann Arbor. Jennifer, welcome to Issues of the Environment!
Jennifer Lawson: Good morning!
Rebekah Warren: Jennifer, Ann Arbor has been dealing with flooding for more than a century. Historically, one of the answers was essentially to get the water underground and out of sight, including burying portions of Allen Creek in pipes. But we've been seeing some pretty dramatic reminders of that old infrastructure and its limits, particularly the August 2023 storm that brought nearly five inches of rain in about three hours. Was there a particular storm or moment when the city realized that simply building bigger pipes wasn't going to be enough and that Ann Arbor needs a fundamentally different approach to managing stormwater?
Jennifer Lawson: That's a really great question! What we've seen is it's not just one storm. We've seen such a change in rain events over the past several decades. Utilizing data from the university and with [Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments], we are seeing more rain. We're seeing a higher intensity of that rainfall. And it really is a different kind of storm than we've seen in the past 100 years. Seeing this data, seeing the change in precipitation patterns, forced us to ask those questions of how are we managing our system and are we really doing what we need to be doing to manage for the future of our community.
Rebekah Warren: But one of the interesting things about this plan is that it's not just being treated as simply a drainage project. It's closely connected to Ann Arbor's broader A2ZERO climate goals. I think some of us don't necessarily think of rainwater management as climate action in the same ways that we think about electric vehicles or renewable energy. So how does managing stormwater, particularly investing in green infrastructure, help contribute to Ann Arbor's climate goals?
Jennifer Lawson: One of the benefits of managing stormwater, there's so many ways to manage stormwater, as you were mentioning previously. The typical way was to get water from point A to point B--out of sight, out of mind. And that has been a really strong philosophical shift where we now start looking at stormwater as an amenity. We now start to look at stormwater to infiltrate or sort of go where Mother Nature intended it. And over time, we've developed our communities with so much impervious area, so that rainfall has nowhere to go. And with the increase in impervious, we are getting more stormwater. We're getting more stormwater into the pipes. And if we start looking at how it ties into those broader A2ZERO goals, one of those A2ZERO goals is really looking at how we can adapt to the current climate or adapt to the future climate conditions that we know are going to be on our future horizon. So, looking at, again, the philosophy of how we manage stormwater really falls right in line with managing those infrastructure utilities for our future climate conditions.
Rebekah Warren: And as you mentioned, we're seeing heavier rainfall events that are putting stress on infrastructure that was designed for a different climate. So is the goal of this plan to get ahead of those changes, designing for the storms that we expect in the future, or are we still largely playing catch-up with the climate that we're experiencing today?
Jennifer Lawson: You know, it's a little bit of both. This Comprehensive Stormwater Management Plan is not a list of projects. It is not an analysis of where we have gone wrong or where we need a correction. It really is more of a philosophical, overarching, long-term, decision-making framework. What we recognized several years ago in Ann Arbor is we've done a lot of really great projects for stormwater, and we have a lot of policies or procedures that do great things for managing stormwater and managing our utilities as a whole. But this document really is compounding all of those studies and resources and policy documents, including a level of service analysis that we did several years ago to incorporate resiliency and climate adaptation and make a standard for stormwater management.
Rebekah Warren: This is 89.1 WEMU, and you're listening to Issues of the Environment. I'm Rebekah Warren, and my guest is Jennifer Lawson, water quality manager for the city of Ann Arbor. We're talking about Ann Arbor's new Comprehensive Stormwater Management Plan and a changing approach to managing rainfall in our community. Jennifer, it's easy to look at a flooded Ann Arbor intersection as a very local problem, but water doesn't stop at a city boundary. Stormwater is flowing off streets, parking lots and rooftops and can carry things like road salt, sediment, lawn chemicals and other pollutants into the Huron River. Can you walk us through what happens environmentally when a major storm overwhelms our city's stormwater system?
Jennifer Lawson: So, in a smaller rain event, something [where] you have maybe a quarter of an inch that falls over a couple of hours, it sort of washes the pavement a little bit, and we call that the first flush. And that goes down into the pipe. It sort of trickles slowly out to the river. Here in the city of Ann Arbor, we do not have a treatment plant that treats any stormwater. Every single drop of rain in the city of Ann Arbor flows out to the Huron River, ultimately. So, if we sort of think about it from the infrastructure underground in those pipes, when it rains, we're sort of washing the rooftops, pavement, sidewalks down into those storm drains, and it goes right out to the Huron River. What we can look at as opportunities, though, is installations of detention basins or green infrastructure, rain gardens, bioswales, even impervious pavement or infiltration areas where we can slow the water down, capture those pollutants before they get to the river and have an opportunity for the river to receive cleaner waters at the end section of those pipes before it runs into the river.
Rebekah Warren: And the Huron River isn't simply a beautiful thing to look at in our backyards. It's not simply an ecological resource. It's also an important drinking water source. How much of the stormwater strategy is really about protecting Ann Arbor's water security? And how much is about recognizing our responsibility to the larger Huron River watershed and the communities downstream?
Jennifer Lawson: The city of Ann Arbor's drinking water intake is just upstream of the city proper. So our stormwater efforts, and I'll use a technical term, our non-point source runoff efforts, are really focused on the greater, not only Huron River, but Lake Erie basin. So, there certainly is an inherent connection with the greater Great Lakes community when it comes to water quality, because we have so many municipalities in the Lake Erie basin that do use that as a drinking water source. Here in the city of Ann Arbor, though, we actually look at our upstream neighbors for opportunities to address non-point source runoff pollution improvement, and those are our communities upstream of the city of Ann Arbor, which ultimately flow to Barton Pond, where we see a lot our drinking water intake.
Rebekah Warren: Jennifer, the city has spent months gathering input from residents, businesses, neighborhood groups, schools and other partners. And now you're working towards that final comprehensive plan. Once it's completed, what will residents actually see as changes on the ground? Will this mean new green infrastructure projects in neighborhoods, changes to maintenance, different requirements for development, perhaps a different way for us to think about stormwater every time it rains? What will residents see when the new plan is implemented?
Jennifer Lawson: Residents will see....well, they're not going to see things being built because we already are building a lot of great stormwater projects that address pollutant removal and infiltration and water quantity management. What is going to really happen is mostly behind the scenes. It's not going to be a quick rollout. I'm imagining years of rollout because it's going to a lot of policy implementation and adoption. It is a framework for decision-making. And so, when we think about what projects need to be built or what type of maintenance we need to do, what type of improvements or rehab we have to do on the system, including new pipes, lining pipes and then actually monitoring what we're doing, that's really the breadth of this plan. It's that policy initiative that will be behind the scenes. That being said, what the community will see is a fair amount of public engagement and outreach messaging. We want to make sure that the community also understands the work that we are doing for stormwater, so there will be an increased offsite social media presence or communications presence to really elevate the importance of stormwater and how it dovetails into so many areas within the community--both quality of life, recreation, as you mentioned, drinking water and that amenity that we all know and love through the center of our city.
Rebekah Warren: Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us today and helping us understand what is happening with the city's new Comprehensive Stormwater Management Plan! Jennifer Lawson is water quality manager for the city of Ann Arbor. For more information on our conversation today, visit our website at WEMU.org. Issues of the Environment is produced in partnership with the office of the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner, and you hear it here every Wednesday. I'm Rebekah Warren, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU Ypsilanti.
Resources
City of Ann Arbor Water Resources
Ann Arbor Stormwater Comprehensive Plan
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