Chapter 3: A New Approach to Natural Infrastructure
Learn more about natural infrastructure in Naturally Stronger, which illustrates the importance of equitable investments in natural water infrastructure by highlighting successes across the country including contributions to national and local economies. Chapter 3 describes natural infrastructure solutions that protect, restore and enhance natural processes.
Traditionally, drinking water-, wastewater-, and stormwater-related challenges would be tackled in isolation, without regard for the interconnections between them. However, the scale and scope of America’s water challenges demand a new approach. Rather than dividing the waters into separate categories, the new approach manages water as a single resource and utilizes the combined benefits of natural and gray infrastructure. Forward-thinking communities across the country are adopting proven technology, tools, and policies that promote reconnecting the waters and re-establishing or mimicking the natural water cycle. This integrated approach is the future of water management.
We call it One Water.
One Water is an attempt to catalyze the shift toward an integrated approach to water management by bringing different city agencies, nonprofits, community voices, and other stakeholders that work on various aspects of water together for collective problem-solving and decision-making.
We must recognize all the benefits of water, and acknowledge that trade-offs occur as decisions are made. We must recognize that infrastructure decisions impact other critical dimensions of how our communities evolve, and build a large enough table to include everyone — particularly communities of color and low-wealth neighborhoods that have been historically excluded from the process and have shouldered a disproportionate share of the burdens associated with established policies and practices. A transparent, inclusive approach will afford decision makers the opportunity to allocate resources, investments, and opportunities with an equity lens. This level of accountability is critical.
The One Water integrated approach also yields benefits along the full water continuum — from headwaters to the tap and, ultimately, America’s oceans, lakes, and bays. By looking at the challenge comprehensively, we are guided toward solutions that integrate natural infrastructure with gray infrastructure, with an emphasis on restoring and enhancing natural processes. The major components of such an approach are described below.
Protecting Source Waters
Across the country, approximately 117 million Americans rely on small headwater streams at least in part for their drinking water supply. Numerous studies have affirmed the intuitive: high-quality source water can reduce treatment costs. Source water refers to the streams, rivers, or lakes that are used for drinking water. Water utilities with well-protected source waters avoid dredging and maintenance costs, and even major capital investments, by bypassing elements of the conventional treatment process. Rivers with protected source waters are also less prone to costly, dangerous flooding and are better able to maintain water supply through dry seasons. The health of these small streams and wetlands is critical to the health of the entire water system, providing (in addition to drinking water) food, recreational opportunities, and wildlife habitat.
Urban Water Infrastructure
Stormwater infrastructure can perform double duty if designed to filter and store rainwater while creating much-needed green space in densely populated urban areas. Designing stormwater management practices in this way, referred to as natural stormwater infrastructure, is an approach to water management that protects, restores, or mimics the natural water cycle in an urban environment and includes rain gardens, permeable pavements, green roofs, infiltration planters, trees and tree boxes, and rainwater harvesting systems. These engineered techniques focus on collecting stormwater and infiltrating it into soil or stone basins where it is filtered of pollutants and gradually seeps into the ground and through shallow groundwater, back to the nearest stream or river.
Riverside Land Conservation
Healthy, protected forested areas along rivers — known as riparian buffers — enhance and maintain water quality while supporting thriving wildlife and recreational amenities. A 2016 report by American Rivers and the University of Maryland, The Economic Value of Riparian Buffers, noted that buffers on private property raise home values. (A restoration project on Watts Branch, a heavily developed tributary of the Anacostia River in Washington, DC, dramatically cut erosion and polluted stormwater while putting people to work, restoring part of Marvin Gaye Park and creating other recreational amenities for local residents.)
Floodplain Conservation
Major rivers and their floodplains deliver a wealth of economic, natural, and social benefits. They contain our country’s richest farmland and provide recreational opportunities as well as commercial, residential, and industrial development worth billions of dollars. Historically, floodplains were easy and attractive places to build, which disconnected many rivers from the surrounding land and is why so many people and businesses are now at risk from catastrophic floods. Across the country, communities are proving the benefits of keeping rivers connected to their floodplains, integrating flood control and restoration projects that improve public safety and the health of the environment while supporting agriculture, a vibrant economy, and recreation.
Groundwater Recharge
Natural infrastructure practices that allow rainwater to filter back into the ground contribute to the recharge of both deep aquifers and subsurface groundwater — critical drinking and irrigation water sources for many parts of the country. Managers of the overdrawn Pajaro Valley Aquifer, which provides more than 90 percent of the water used by the $600 million agriculture industry in Santa Clara County, California, solved their problem by installing soils with high percolation and infiltration rates. An investment analysis conducted by Earth Economics found the project not only helped with water supply and flood control, it saved money, returning nearly two dollars for every dollar invested after 10 years.
Learn more about equitable investment in natural infrastructure:
· Chapter 1: Naturally Stronger
· Chapter 2: Our Communities At Risk
· Chapter 3: A New Approach to Natural Infrastructure
· Chapter 4: Natural Infrastructure: An Economic Engine
· Chapter 5: Community Benefits of Integrated Infrastructure
· Chapter 6: Funding Natural Infrastructure
