Kansas City has plans ...

McClatchy is just a mine of interesting articles today. They point to this article: Kansas City plans green scheme for sewer system by Karen Dillon and Lynn Horsley, The Kansas City Star

The following are listed as part of the 'green design:'

•Porous paving, an alternative to conventional asphalt and concrete, is designed to allow rainfall to soak through the paving to reduce runoff.

•Rain gardens usually are built in a shallow depression using conditioned soil and a gravel bed with native plants that slow rain water while filtering it.

•Storm-water planters, built either above or below ground, use conditioned soil and native plants to slow and filter rain water. They can sit on porous paving, allowing rain water to soak into the ground.

•Green roofs are installed on flat or sloped roofs and consist of a layer of soil and vegetation that slows runoff and can provide insulation from the heat and cold, reducing extreme temperature fluctuations.

•Rain barrels catch rain water flowing from eave troughs and divert it from the sewer system. It then can be used in irrigation systems and to water lawns and gardens.

•Tree boxes are built along sidewalks and streets, capturing runoff and channeling it to be cleaned by vegetation and soil before entering a catch basin. The runoff helps irrigate the trees.

•Vegetative swales are open-channel drainage-ways that carry runoff in place of sewer pipes. Water doesn’t pond in the channel for long periods. Instead, channels allow the water to soak into the ground.

Arizona, including Tucson, being in the clutches of the real estate and developer mafia, can only manage to come up with plans such as re-vitalizing downtown Tucson, for the umpteenth time, building LA type freeways that never quite handle the volume of traffic and building big and little boxes across the desert. It's called progress.