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I was driving around the suburban areas of my town yesterday and noticed the most common thing our detention ponds. A place for rainwater to go.
Yet when I was in Europe a few months ago for work, even in their new areas they don't have detention ponds.
Where does the rainfall go in places like that, on why do we deal with it differently? It seems like an inefficient waste of space to gather water on high taxable pieces of ground.
I was driving around the suburban areas of my town yesterday and noticed the most common thing our detention ponds. A place for rainwater to go.
Yet when I was in Europe a few months ago for work, even in their new areas they don't have detention ponds.
Where does the rainfall go in places like that, on why do we deal with it differently? It seems like an inefficient waste of space to gather water on high taxable pieces of ground.
Actually our state is now making it harder to get retention pond type stormwater management approved. They are pushing more distributed (and expensive) solutions as part of the new stricter requirements. I don't know what is used in Europe outside what I saw while on River Cruises on the Rhine and the Danube. I didn't see anything more advanced than I have seen in similar areas in the U.S. retention ponds take space which is available in most tract development areas in the U.S. From the few I saw in Europe they are retention structures built as part of the substructure for parking lots, roadways, etc. They are less obvious and more expensive.
I was driving around the suburban areas of my town yesterday and noticed the most common thing our detention ponds. A place for rainwater to go.
Yet when I was in Europe a few months ago for work, even in their new areas they don't have detention ponds.
Where does the rainfall go in places like that, on why do we deal with it differently? It seems like an inefficient waste of space to gather water on high taxable pieces of ground.
Since we don't know where you live or where you vacationed we can't give you an informed answer.
It seems to me that detention ponds are often located on lots/areas that are less than desirable for building, such as steep terrain, abutting busy streets, under power lines, etc.
As more land is heavily developed and paved over there is more need for retention ponds but some municipalities prefer a more expensive/less visible water run-off solution which drives up the cost of new development (rightly so IMO). Water run-off from streets and parking sends nasty polluting chemicals into waterways which are sources for our drinking water.
Lots sizes have been shrinking for family homes, that means less areas where rainfall can sink into the ground and therefore more run-off into waterways.
Florida has a LOT of heavy rainfall in the rainy season, so heavy that there is little chance for the rain to permeate the ground and it runs right into lakes and rivers and coastal waters. I lived near a tourist town famous for it's pretty beaches. What tourists didn't know is that the beach water often had fecal coliform in high levels because the outfall was right on the beach from the storm drains. This is true of many areas not just Florida.
Because many of our environmental laws are stricter than in Europe.
Really???? I know it is the other way around.
In recent years, the United States has lagged behind the European Union in its ratification and implementation of major multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). The development represents something of a role reversal between the US and the EU, given that the US had previously acted as the primary driver behind the adoption of most MEAs since the 1970s, with the EU largely following the American lead
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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We have those all over the place here, returning as much rainwater as possible to the groundwater and keeping it, along with the road chemicals out of our streams. Even our creeks may have salmon , but f not, they will feed into salmon rivers. We also have fairly high stormwater fees, on our property tax bills, based on the amount of impervious surface on the lot. In our case, it's $380.
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