The Low Impact Development (LID) approach to stormwater management aims to mimic how water moves through undeveloped landscapes through infiltrating, storing, filtering, evaporating and detaining runoff on-site. Rather than treating rainfall as a waste product that needs to be directed off-site as quickly as possible, low impact development techniques aim to use rainfall as a valuable resource where it falls.
Examples of this approach to stormwater management include:
Because the goal of this lot-level approach is to treat rainwater where it falls, it gives home-owners an opportunity to make a difference in the quality of local waterbodies from their own back yards.
Examples of LID techniques to be installed in the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood include:
" We came from the water; our bodies are largely water; and water plays a fundamental role in our psychology. We need constant access to water, all around us; and we cannot have it without reverence for water in all its forms. But everywhere in cities water is out of reach. Even in the temperate climates that are water rich, the natural sources of water are dried up, hidden, covered, lost. Rainwater runs underground in sewers; water reservoirs are covered and fenced off…But it is possible to imagine a town where there are many hundreds of places near every home and workplace where there is water…Natural streams in their original streambeds, together with their surrounding vegetation can be preserved and maintained. Rainwater can be allowed to assemble from rooftops into small pools and to run through channels along garden paths and public pedestrian paths, where it can be seen and enjoyed. Fountains can be built in public places. And in those cities where streams have been buried, it may be possible to unravel them again." – Alexander et al 1977, Pattern Language