#gray infrastructure

This side event will discuss opportunities and strategies to enhance investments in quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure in the context of the most vulnerable countries such as the LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS.

It will contextualize the current state of play in increasing the resilience of hard, soft and natural infrastructure across different infrastructure systems, including water and transportation. Good practices related to gray and green/blue infrastructure, including nature-based solutions, will be presented. Panellists will also discuss next steps to implement the infrastructure-related calls for action in the GA Resolutions 77/282 and 77/289.

This event is being organized by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and is co-sponsored by the Co-Chairs of the Group of Friends of Disaster Risk Reduction (Permanent Missions of Australia, Indonesia, Norway and Peru), as well as the Permanent Mission of India, the Permanent Mission of Poland and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.

Recent information released by NYC DEP reported an update to the bioswale & green infrastructure posted on this blog on January 21, 2015. The behemoth New York City government may move slowly at times, but the recent report indicates it is moving successfully. The recent successes reported may lay the groundwork for an expansion to the pilot programs currently being managed. This could be good news for local waterways because more than 20 billion gallons of sewage flows untreated into the local waterways each year. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Office of Green Infrastructure (OGI) identified three neighborhoods in priority combined sewer overflow (CSO) areas: Hutchinson River in the Bronx, Newtown Creek in Brooklyn and Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn, to test the effectiveness of green infrastructure (GI) systems on a multiple block scale. While the DEP appears to be able to incorporate a certain amount of "green infrastructure" & like bioswales into the effort & Citwide improvement of "gray infrastructure” with projects all over New York City.

The standard for effective bioswales is capturing the first inch of rain over 10 percent of the city's impermeable surface—the roads, roofs and concrete that account for about two-thirds of the city landscape. The City is nowhere near this standard at this juncture. It's really about a way to manage storm water as close to the site as possible," said Angela Licata, the department's deputy commissioner for sustainability. "We very much want to promote the greenest of technology." Each swale held as much as 2,000 gallons of storm water, and helped divert roughly 20 percent of storm water, the agency said