Implementing green building on a large scale is suspected to have significant benefits to the environment and larger infrastructures, specifically water and wastewater. With contributions from the CNS program, Portland Oregon implemented a vast stormwater management system throughout the city to reduce stormwater runoff. Green building technologies, such as water
has been implemented on a large scale in a growing number of areas where natural water resources are rapidly depleting. The scarcity of resources forces the cities in these areas to become the early adopters of the sustainable technology and planning in large scale. Orange County is an example of an area with a shortage of water that led to the development of intensive water reuse program.
4.3.1 Sustainability in Portland
Starting 10 years ago, the city of Portland, Oregon, made a move toward sustainable development. The city decided to become initiative to implement environmentally friendly practices to their surrounding, especially practices to reduce or eliminate stormwater runoff. Their movement is sparked by the rising interest in weaving “green into the grey fabric.” This movement is supported by NCER through the CNS program in 2003 because of the sustainability goal of the project.
The city acts as an influential factor that affects the attitude of the people who are living in it. When there are many green design constructed and managed in the city, the people will not only witness the benefit these practices bring to the environment but also gradually start to see these practices as common and not something extraordinary. It helps to increase public awareness and indirectly urge people to become greener. There will be a tipping point where the number of green-minded people becomes great enough to allow going green to become the new fashion.
Before, the problem existed is that people who want to go green do not know where to get the information. Realizing the problem, the city begins to provide manual and guide about low impact development practices that a person can easily implement at the house to reduce stormwater runoff. These practices are often not complicated and not too costly while still providing effective performance.
The method that the city offers to people may not be the most effective method but it can have a large impact when achieving at the scalability of a city. A LEED Platinum certified building
can achieve 0% stormwater runoff with different stormwater management methods. While this achievement is enormous to one building, it will be negligible when other buildings still have 100%
stormwater runoff. If most buildings just implement a small rain garden, the overall stormwater runoff reduction will be significant. And that is something that can be achieved only with the initiative of the city government.
Another problem of implementing green practices is public incentive. Green practices are often more costly to implement while its benefits are not directly seen by the consumers. Therefore, consumers are reluctant to implement technologies that only benefit the environment. For example, stormwater management practices such as green roof and rain gardens help reduce runoff that can cause erosion and pollution. While those impacts are direct to the environment, people fail to realize that those impacts will eventually affect their health and their water usage … Local cities are at the closest proximity to people that can educate them the importance of their action that can have a large impacts on the environment and themselves. The cities can also provide different types of incentives, from giving awards to reducing taxes.
After this project, the city started another project, called Project DX, to become an initiative example of sustainable design and share their experience with other cities. Project DX is the first step to provide tools and knowledge about stormwater management practices. The city implemented a lot of rain gardens, basins, planters, etc. in the city to reduce the stormwater runoff.
The success of this project is largely based on the outreach towards the public. Portland has been able to convince the public the benefit of reducing runoff. As mentioned in the previous section, we interviewed with the Mr. Tom Puttman, the Principle Investigator of Project DX.
As Mr. Puttman told us about Project DX, a large scale data collection is an ongoing process and will take a lot of time and work. Trends so far has showed that green technologies do indeed
4.3.2 Orange County’s Water Management
California has the one of most intensive water reuse programs in the US. There are several factors which have led to the rapid movement of developing sustainable water infrastructure in California. We have learned that several of the arid regions of California are simply running out of water. Their demand for potable water can no longer be fulfilled strictly from natural sources.
As several EPA offices have mentioned to us about California, Orange County has made a move toward wastewater reuse. Their treatment plant is one of a few in the country that can treat wastewater to a quality that can be discharged back into the soil where it becomes groundwater.
Once the water is returned as groundwater it is ready for potable use. This method of discharging what was once wastewater has negative implications on public opinion. During the initial stages of developing the system the term “toilet to tap” was a common description of the process. However, as Dr. Levine, the national director of Drinking Water Research program, repeatedly stressed, the full water cycle must be considered. A better term for this cycle could be “indirect potable use”.
Ultimately it is these small details, including titling, that will dictate when there will be sufficient public support.
The impacts of treating wastewater for potable use reflect directly toward preventing the depletion of the natural sources. As shown in Figure 4-11, the blue markers represent all existing wastewater treatment plants that discharge into the groundwater. Markers in green are planned sites for future treatment facilities. As shown by the figure, the highest concentration of such facilities is the Southwest region of the United States where water supplies are dwindling. The plant in Orange County, California, which went live in early 2008, is planning to treat 15 million gallons of wastewater per day. Each gallon of water added back to the groundwater is one less gallon needed.
Figure 4-11: The distribution of wastewater reuse treatment plants in the U.S. (PBS, 2008)
An interesting point Dr. Levine mentioned was how many people do not realize that they could have unintentionally used recycled wastewater. An example of this is the Mississippi River.
Along the thousands of miles of river, everything from industrial use to local municipalities gets their water from this source. Factories could have potentially discharged polluted water, which might not be treated properly, back into the river. Moreover, the local water treatment plants take water from the river and treat them to potable water for distribution. The predominant use in a local community is the potable water from these treatment plants. After used, the wastewater goes through the traditional treatment methods before being discharged back into the river. This means that anyone south of this location using the Mississippi River as a water source will be taking in water that was once discharged from a treatment plant or a factory. This is called unintentionally indirect water reuse. By the time the water reaches the Mississippi Delta near New Orleans the water could have gone through any number of uses and treatments.
Identical to what Dr. Levine was speaking of with the Mississippi is the Colorado River.
Bruce Reznik, who is the executive director of an environmental group known as the San Diego
drinking some kind of pure water and toilet-to-tap is something that's unsafe.” These types of social influence are necessary for public acceptance of wastewater reuse.
4.3.3 Implementing Into Other Cities
The next logical step for green building and the move toward sustainability is the implementation of green building technologies in other cities across the United States.
While many of the ideas mentioned in section 4.3 are the future of sustainable living, many of these technologies are early in their testing phases. One of the biggest difficulties for wide scale implementation remains social acceptance. Often the technology is accused of being unproven outside the laboratory.