The Depave Movement takes these individual water management strategies and deploys them through a lens of community building and social justice.
Excerpt from this story from Treehugger:
Treehugger has long had an interest in rainwater harvesting, porous paving, and stormwater gardens. By rethinking our built environment, we can create opportunities for water to seep into the ground during extreme rainwater events—and often sequester carbon and promote biodiversity in the process too.
What the Depave Movement does, however, is it takes these individual water management strategies and deploys them through a lens of community building and social justice. Because just like air pollution, the urban heat island effect, and other environmental ills, the impact of flooding and toxic groundwater pollution is rarely shared equally.
Depave—one of the community groups that is pioneering this movement—is focused on reclaiming over-paved spaces in Portland, Oregon. Bringing together staff and volunteers for what it describes as “constructive destruction”, the organization partners with host sites each year to demolish un- or under-used pavement, and instead design, fund, and install a range of permeable community spaces that include play-scapes, parks, and community gardens.
According to their 2019 Impact Report, the group has depaved over 220,000 square feet over the past 12 years, collecting stormwater runoff from over 500,000 square feet of adjacent impervious areas. All together, their work has reduced annual stormwater runoff by a whopping 15,840,000 gallons. And while this group focuses its efforts in the Pacific Northwest, it has also published a free guidebook—called "How to Depave: The Guide to Freeing Your Soil"—which is intended to provide insights for others who are setting out on this journey.
