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Wisconsin
Milwaukee Will Encourage Green Roofs for Stormwater Management as Part of Sustainable Development Initiative
Devised by Mayor Tom Barrett, his new City Development Commissioner Rocky Marcoux, and key environmental and business leaders, the Milwaukee Initiative for Sustainable Development will encourage builders to contain storm water runoff through ''green'' roofing techniques, which will be obligatory to those seeking tax increment financing and other subsidies, with Commissioner Marcoux stressing, ''If you get public money, you should be doing things for the public good.''
The commissioner, until recently Milwaukee Housing Authority development manager, writes Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Whitney Gould, is presenting the newly built $12 million Highland Gardens public housing mid-rise -- with 114 affordable apartments for the elderly and the disabled, and with a 20,000-square-foot vegetational roof -- as a runoff containment model. Its sedum and other native grasses, planted in four-to-eight-square-foot plastic modules, will absorb 85 percent of a 2-inch rain, which would have gone into the city's over-strained sewer system.
The ''green'' modules will also protect the roof from ultraviolet sun rays, increasing its longevity by 50 percent and reducing the building's cooling and heating costs by 20 percent.
''It's the ultimate low-tech solution,'' points out Mayor Barrett. ''And if we're going to sell the idea to others, we believe the city has to walk the walk.''
The mayor and the development commissioner envision another 3,000 ''green roof'' public housing units throughout the city, while the Common Council wants other users to benefit, too. Under its recently approved budget amendment, sponsored by Democratic Alderman Michael McGee, experts will look at 125 city-owned buildings with flat roofs, including schools and libraries, to determine whether they can be retrofitted to cut operational costs and control runoff. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
11/28/2004
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