Commercial LID

Expand your knowledge of LID (Low Impact Development) practices for commercial and urban development.

PHOTO: UACDC

Adopt the Watershed Approach to development. 

The three tenants of the watershed approach:

  1. Enhance landscape biodiversity

  2. Maximize water infiltration and eliminate runoff

  3. Engineer hydrology in distributed networks 


“Reform is difficult because everyone’s models and business plans were formulated around the prevailing, hard-engineering model. This model creates cognitive barriers for LID implementation, including a lack of local precedent, a perception of risk, and a learning curve for the construction industry.”

Green Infrastructure Cost Share Program at IRWP

The Green Infrastructure Program is a cost-share program. IRWP can fund up to 50% of all project costs. Landowners can generate match through in-kind labor, equipment, cash, or other grant dollars. Learn More

Detention pond retrofits

Bioswales

Permeable pavement and ribbon driveways

Green roofs

Green streets

Rain gardens

When it rains, stormwater runs over impervious hard surfaces picking up pollutants such as yard debris, trash, fertilizers, vehicle fluids, and pet waste, which are washed into storm drains that connect to our local waterways. 

LID and Green Infrastructure can help by soaking in stormwater and phytoremediating pollutants.

Recommended Practices, A Summary

  1. Go from thinking about stormwater needing “facilities” vs stormwater needing “networks” of catchment and treatment. Create better distribution to create resiliency. Connect facilities in multiple routes to reduce the effects of gaps and overload. Hybrid conventional (hard-engineering) and ecological systems (soft engineering) built in a network are the key.

  2. Upgrade surface materials. Maximize parking lots, roads, and sidewalks by utilizing more green bands, edges, pixels, and “parking gardens”. Pixelated parking reduces impervious surface area by pixelating the parking surface with LID paving and landscaping which regulates the climate, the atmosphere, reduces erosion, and increases filtration, infiltration, sediment retention, and flow attenuation. “Parking gardens” are attractive and an effective means of treating stormwater. Some facilities are:

    1. Porous asphalt

    2. Pervious concrete

    3. Interlocking paver systems

    4. Alternative paving systems

    5. Gravel systems

    6. Grass, concrete, and turf pavers 

  3. Integrate components of low-impact streets. Consider curb alternatives that include features like curb cuts, flush curbs, LID curb extensions, and integrated plants via bioswales and rain gardens to replace pipe and pond facilities. These alternatives convert point source flow to sheet flow and provide sediment capture. These should also be designed with urban trees in mind. More examples of alternative designs are eco-boulevards and the utilization of arterial streets and parkways vs. local streets. 

  4. Urban green spaces can serve recreational, aesthetic, and comprehensive ecological purposes. Open space should be comprehensively planned as a green network that maintains waterbody functioning and ecosystem connectivity through the use of designed parks, greenways, and self-organizing conservation areas. Consider treatment parks, water harvesting parks, and maximizing greenways.

  5. Encourage conservation development. Every effort should be made to eliminate development in the floodplain and maintain a 100’ riparian (vegetated) buffer along stream edges, as well as to protect wetland features, prairie mounds, or other landmarks of cultural/historical/ecological interest.

“Compact residential development conserves 30-80 percent of a site’s buildable land as permanent, undivided open space. While lots in conventional neighborhoods may be large, their natural landscapes are usually replaced by industrial lawns that diminish ecological functioning. Despite their low densities, sprawling subdivisions ruin viewsheds that initially attracted property investors to the site. Conservation design allows for the same number of homes as a conventional development, with greater savings in infrastructure costs due to shorter street lengths. Increased density and shared open space, as numerous studies have shown, also offer spacial unity and ecological integrity while creating premium market value.”

— Low Impact Development: A Design Manual pg 130

Oversize pipes

Flow control devices

  • Flow splitter

  • Level spreader and rock swale

  • Permeable weir

  • Curbs

  • Check dams

  • Tree mound

  • Splash block and rip-rap

Dry swales and bioswales 

Underground detention

Vegetated detention

Wet vaults

Rainwater harvesting

  • Rain barrels

  • Slim tanks

  • Plastic, fiberglass, metal, or wood cisterns

  • Pre-cast septic tank

  • Bladder tank

Filter strips

Underground sand filter

Surface sand filter

Vegetated walls

Vegetated roofs

Infiltration trenches and basins

Tree box filter

Other LID Facilities that should be integrated in combination to create treatment networks

Contact us about Commercial Low Impact Development.

contact@irwp.org
(479) 203-7084

221 S Main St. / P.O. Box 205
Cave Springs, AR 72718

Permeable Surfaces

Impermeable surfaces such as asphalt of parking lots and concrete sidewalks create runoff, which picks up pollutants and pours into our stormwater drainage systems. By reducing the amount of impermeable surfaces in our cities, we reduce the amount of polluted runoff that enters our rivers. You will find that permeable solutions are cost-effective and can even increase the longevity of those areas.

Info on Porous Pavers

Permeable Pavers

Permeable Parking Lots 

Rain Gardens and Bioswales

Rain gardens and bioswales are vegetated areas created to catch stormwater runoff. By allowing the runoff to soak into the ground rather than running into the drainage system, more pollutants are filtered out. Rain gardens and bioswales are attractive additions that promote plant, insect, and wildlife habitation.

How to Build a Rain Garden

Low Impact Development - Rain Gardens

Low Impact Development - Bioswales

Using Native Plants to Improve Stormwater Quality in Urban and Suburban Landscapes

Green Roofs

Vegetated roofs are also called "green roofs". These are designed to-- you guessed it, soak up rainwater! Working as a great insulator, a green roof is a great option for commercial buildings and residences alike. Green roofs are also used to grow food in urban areas.

How Green Roofs Can Help Cities

Green Roofs - Stormwater Pollution Solutions

Green Infrastructure & Low Impact Development

Read more here

Green infrastructure supports sustainable communities. Low Impact Development (LID) is an approach to land development (or re-development) that works with nature to manage stormwater as close to its source as possible. LID employs principles such as preserving and recreating natural landscape features, minimizing effective imperviousness to create functional and appealing site drainage that treat stormwater as a resource rather than a waste product.

Ozark Native Plants and Trees

Plant natives! Read why here: The Perfect Lawn (IRWP Stewardship Story)

NATIVE PLANT LISTS

Helpful lists for gardeners and landscapers in NW Arkansas, created by Wild Ones Ozark Chapter

Lists from other organizations

Ozark Native Plants for Phytoremediation— Eric Fuselier

“HOW TO” RESOURCES

INFORMATION ON INVASIVE PLANT SPECIES

ONLINE RESOURCES TO HELP WITH PLANT SELECTION

ONLINE RESOURCES FOR NATIVE PLANT INFORMATION

HORTICULTURAL PROFESSIONALS IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS

Missed our 2021 NWA LID Conference?

No worries, you can find the presentations from the conference, educational documents, and other Northwest Arkansas LID information at irwp.org/nwalid2021.

Go to the LID Conference Page