New York City reaches out to its customers to propel Green Infrastructure investment

摘要

Since 2010, New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) has invested $1 billion toward green infrastructure, with the aim of managing its stormwater and reducing combined sewer overflow (CSO) events -when excess stormwater, mixed with sewage, saturates the sewerage system and is discharged untreated. So far, NYC has installed over 11,000 green infrastructure assets and has thousands more in the planning or early implementation stages. These assets, which include rain gardens, infiltration basins and permeable pavements, harness the power of greenery and infiltration to absorb excess rainwater and keep it out of the sewers. The installed assets currently help reduce CSO by approximately 500 million gallons a year compared to the picture a decade ago.NYC DEP is now looking to ramp up the involvement of the private sector as it accelerates the rollout of its Green Infrastructure programme to achieve its goal of reducing CSO by 1.67 billion gallons a year by 2030. The new Private Property Retrofit Incentive Program, run by contractor Arcadis under a five-year contract, is set to launch at the end of this month. Using designs developed by DEP, Arcadis will deal directly with private owners to install stormwater management systems on large properties and receive a flat rate from the city per 'greened acre' it constructs. The greened acre metric is used by DEP to convey the volume of stormwater and impervious area managed by green infrastructure installations. A greened acre represents the depth of stormwater runoff from an impervious acre, which for typical NYC green infrastructure practices, is between 1-2 inches. DEP expects this large-scale incentive programme will create 200 greened acres over five years in addition to the 1,506 greened acres created in NYC so far. "We're hoping it will be widely successful because if they go get the bigger properties with the bigger parking lots, they can offer them a new parking lot for exchange of [stormwater] storage underneath that parking lot, it's a win-win," said Angela Licata, deputy commissioner for sustainability at NYC DEP. She added more needs to be done to encourage private investment and warned the Green Infrastructure programme could not achieve its goal without input from private property owners. As well as the upcoming incentive programme, NYC runs a grant programme to encourage green roof retrofits, and offers a tax abatement for properties that install green roofs. The city will also soon be reinforcing regulatory requirements for stormwater management for new builds in the city, thanks to amendments proposed by DEP.