Quote:
Originally Posted by jaysb
Dumb-ish question for the board.....I was driving around all of development in Northern Liberties on Tuesday and I got to thinking...we've all heard how antiquated our water/sewage systems are. We've gone from a population of 2MM->1.6MM but it certainly wasn't the density were are seeing being built around the Piazza etc. How are we adding so much density on antiquated infrastructure? Was this updated recently? Were they originally over-built to handle this? Thanks, I'll hang up and listen.
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I would say the Water Department might be the one city department that is a leader in its peer group.
I want to say about 10 or 12 years ago it revised building guidelines to focus on increasing the permeability of the city's surfaces which is why you see so many buildings with green roofs, etc. Developers get bonuses for using them. In other small ways, ex: there's a charge on our water bill now that in effect assesses a surcharge for runoff (i.e. shopping centers pay more on this charge assuming the lot is a massive parking lot)...I'm not 100% sure how this money is used but my guess is it is to update outdate existing infrastructure when it does need to be replaced. Developers are also required to build underground storage tanks for overflow that hold water in downpours before it is released to the sewer systems.
These things might seem like very incremental measures, but they make a huge difference in aggregate. Northern Liberties used have flooding multiple times a year, especially along St John Newman Way near Liberty Lands Park. Knock on wood, I don't think it's had flooding like that in close to a decade since these measures were implemented.
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