{"id":9902,"date":"2024-02-29T16:35:48","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T16:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=9902"},"modified":"2024-02-29T16:35:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T16:35:48","slug":"us-cities-could-be-capturing-billions-of-gallons-of-rain-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=9902","title":{"rendered":"US Cities Could Be Capturing Billions of Gallons of Rain a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Your city is a scab on the landscape: sidewalks, roads, parking lots, rooftops\u2014the built environment repels water into sewers and then into the environment. Urban planners<\/a> have been doing it for centuries, treating stormwater as a nuisance to be diverted away as quickly as possible to avoid flooding. Not only is that a waste of free water, it\u2019s an increasingly precarious strategy, as climate change worsens droughts<\/a> but also supercharges storms<\/a>, dumping ever more rainfall on impervious cities.<\/p>\n

Urban areas in the United States generate an estimated 59.5 million acre-feet of stormwater runoff per year on average\u2014equal to 53 billion gallons each day\u2014according to a new report from the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research group specializing in water. Over the course of the year, that equates to 93 percent of total municipal and industrial water use. American urban areas couldn\u2019t feasibly capture all<\/em> of that bountiful runoff, but a combination of smarter stormwater infrastructure and \u201csponge city\u201d techniques like green spaces<\/a> would make urban areas far more sustainable<\/a> on a warming planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere really is a substantial amount of stormwater runoff being generated all across the entire country,\u201d says Bruk Berhanu, lead author of the report and a senior researcher at the Pacific Institute. \u201cThere really is no reason why stormwater capture shouldn\u2019t be up there on the list of water sources for all communities in the country that are looking to secure their long-term supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pacific Institute did the calculation with the software company 2NDNATURE, which generated a high-resolution model of stormwater runoff for areas in the US with at least 2,000 housing units or 5,000 people. They combined characteristics of cities, such as the amount of impervious surface, with historical rainfall data.<\/p>\n

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