Please place referral to the Sustainability and Resiliency Committee to implement a plan to supplement the City’s “gray” infrastructure with “green” infrastructure, similar to the plan adopted by the City of New Orleans, and apply for Department of Housing and Urban Development Funds (HUD) to execute it.

With a $141 million award from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, New Orleans is planning to supplement its “gray” infrastructure with "green" infrastructure. By reengineering how storm water flows through its lowlands, New Orleans hopes to work with its ecology rather than interfere with it. New Orleans will serve as the testing ground for a network of projects that filter and store water through natural processes. Existing green spaces will be transformed into parks that will do double duty processing storm water. Native plants are expected to filter out pollutants, and attractive ponds will hold the water. Medians will be converted into special channels and sunken gardens, through which rain will percolate to the water table. Toward the same end, residents have been encouraged to install rain gardens and bioswales - earthen trenches designed to capture runoff - on their properties. Most of these systems are intended to hold surface water for a few days before dispatching it to storm drains. Applied citywide, wet gardens and corridors would transform the urban grid, while at the same time balancing groundwater levels, reducing flood risk, and offering public-health and economic benefits too.

Attached is an article from the Atlantic entitled “New Orleans Learns to Love Water,” which details how New Orleans plans to Change how it handles rain and flooding. The article may also be viewed at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/07/new-orleans-learns-to-love-water/485603/