Minimize Impervious Surfaces!
An impervious surface is any solid structure that prevents rain water from entering the ground. Examples of impervious surfaces include roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks and patios, rooftops, and even highly compacted soils.
In undeveloped areas, most rainwater infiltrates the ground during a storm, while the rest flows across the surface of the land or evaporates back into the atmosphere. In highly developed, urbanized areas, very little water can penetrate the ground because of large expanses of impervious surfaces. Thus, in urbanized areas, more water is forced to run off the land, carrying with it serious threats to both water quantity and quality.
Anything that falls on an impervious surface is exposed to the elements and can be washed away in a storm event. This includes oil from your car, misplaced fertilizer from your driveway, animal wastes, excess dirt, pesticides, and household cleaning products. During a storm, any of these substances that are on an impervious surface will be dislodged and sent to the nearest storm drain which leads directly to a pond, stream, or river without being treated first. These untreated pollutants impair water use by both humans and wildlife. Thus, impervious surfaces also threaten water quality.
What Can You Do?
Creating more pervious surfaces, and minimizing the use of impervious surfaces, at your home or business can help mitigate the impact that urbanization has on the important portions of the water cycle that involve water infiltration into the ground, pollution filtration by soils, recharge of groundwater supplies, and control of flash flooding by slow release of water into streams and rivers via groundwater flow. Below are some suggestions for counteracting the impacts of impervious surfaces.
Reduce impervious surfaces on your property by:
- Using alternative driveway/sidewalk materials (grass pavers, mulch, gravel, swept sand pavers, uncemented brick, or pervious concrete)
- Simply reducing the surface area of your driveway or sidewalk
- Greenscaping your rooftop with planting