Environmental Engineering Reference
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away through sewer pipes and storm drains. Perpetuating this sort
of gray-pipe infrastructure will condemn us to serious water short-
ages and exacerbate fl oods and pollution—the two phenomena are
closely linked. We must, instead, mimic the way nature treats rainwa-
ter, allowing it to percolate into the ground and support plant life
even in our most dense urban areas.”
Nature Stymied
The American Rivers/Natural Resources Defense Council/Smart
Growth America study looked at the 20 metropolitan areas that
experienced the most suburban sprawl between 1982 and 1997.
They focused on sprawl—with its accompanying broad expanses
of impervious surfaces—to show how it encroaches on open space
and threatens water supplies, in part because the loss of unde-
veloped land means a loss of the land's natural fi ltering ability,
preventing the seepage of water into the ground to replenish aqui-
fers. Instead, the rain runs off the nonporous surfaces and is swept
far away. “When we sprawl, we threaten our freshwater resources at
the very time our demand for them is increasing. The large num-
ber of hard surfaces created by traditional suburban development
fundamentally alters the local movement and availability of water,”
the study says.
In 1997, the volume of water that was runoff as opposed to soaking
back into the ground in Atlanta, Georgia, was enough water to supply
the average daily household needs of 1.5 million to 3.6 million people
per year.
Source: “Paving Our Way to Water Shortages: How Sprawl Aggravates the Effects of Drought,”
© American Rivers, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Smart Growth America, 2002.
Whether suburban sprawl is the cause or not, the volume of
that runoff is staggering. The potential amount of water not infi l-
trated back into the ground annually during the period 1982
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