Roll Gardening & Green
Stormwater Runoff
by Luanne Panarotti
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
Joni Mitchell
A late spring rainstorm thunders over a woodland. Water falls in enormous droplets, first on treetops, then onto the understory. Beads of moisture ping off shrubs, then sidle, haltingly, down perennial foliage. Slowed by its passage through the vegetation, most of the water percolates down into the earth. There it provides moisture to the plant community, and still deeper, recharges the groundwater supply – shedding contaminants all along the way. The remaining rainfall makes its way across the surface, drawn by gravity toward one of the many tributaries threading through backyards, bound for the Hudson River.
Now picture that same storm moving across your home and property. Rain pelts your roof, sheeting down into gutters and coursing out of downspouts, leaving gullies in its wake. Water hits and pools on concrete walks and patios. It runs off paved driveway and over compacted lawn, carrying with it remnants of civilization— motor oil, antifreeze, lawn fertilizers, chemical pesticides, elevated temperatures—toward that same majestic river. Along the way, the unchecked rush of water disturbs stream banks, sending sediments downstream to bury sensitive aquatic breeding areas.
The impermeable artifacts of our modern lives—our paved surfaces and our buildings—disrupt the activity of our natural water filtration systems. This has so compromised the health of our streams and rivers that the EPA declared storm water runoff to be the leading threat to our nation’s estuaries.
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