An official website of the United States government
African American communities experience higher incidences of health disparities due to inequitable exposures to environmental stressors. With the increase of climate threats, stormwater runoff and flooding are major concerns that can be linked to environmental injustice in African American communities, including illegal dumping, and even proximity to major highways. Efforts to improve stormwater ( management overlap with efforts to increase green space through the implementation of urban green infrastructure ( presenting the opportunity for UGIUGIto be utilized as a measure to improve geographical and social equity. However there are still many communities who have yet to transition into using green infrastructure for SW management and research is limited on how equitable current stormwater best management practices(SW BMPs) are, particularly in regards to management processes and decisions . The goal of this research is to characterize SW infrastructure in an African American community in Tampa, East Tampa, through the lens of sustainability and environmental justice to better inform management practices towards equitable management of SW infrastructure in the community.
more »
« less
Equitable stormwater utility fees: an integrated analysis of environmental, socioeconomic and infrastructure factors at the community scale
Abstract Municipalities worldwide implement stormwater management programs to mitigate the hydrological and water quality impacts of stormwater runoff. Stormwater utility fees (SWUF) are often used to fund such important programs by collecting revenue from residential and commercial properties. However, existing SWUFs often solely rely on the estimate of impervious surfaces and do not consider other environmental, infrastructure, and socioeconomic factors in the generation and effects of stormwater runoff. This study is the first attempt to propose a reconstruction of SWUFs from the perspectives of social equity and environmental justice. The method aims to address disparities in fee rates among residential parcels, focusing on helping economically disadvantaged communities. It integrates drainage service, potential contribution to non-point source pollution, and socioeconomic status through two alternative schemes. The two schemes allocate fees based on combined rankings of the three factors at the level of census block groups. The proposed method was applied to 88 180 residential parcels in Corpus Christi, Texas, a mid-sized coastal community. The results suggest that over 70% of the disadvantaged communities would benefit from the reconstructed SWUFs without affecting the targeted funding for stormwater infrastructure. This method builds on publicly available datasets and offers an adaptive framework for other municipalities to incorporate additional factors or datasets, representing an exploratory step toward achieving more equitable stormwater management practices.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2050986
- PAR ID:
- 10548729
- Publisher / Repository:
- IOP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability
- Volume:
- 4
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2634-4505
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 041001
- Size(s):
- Article No. 041001
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)Environmental stresses borne of population growth, consumerism and industrialization have subjected many populations worldwide to elevated air pollution. Philadelphia, a historically industrial city in Northeastern United States, is ranked in the top 25 cities in the country for harmful air pollutants (PM2.5, ozone). Philadelphia also experiences pollution & associated health effects on socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. This study seeks to succinctly obstructive pulmonary disease) through a suite of census-derived attributes. Using ArcMap Geographical Information System software (ESRI), attributes, categorized as promoting vulnerability or adaptability, are combined with air pollution data collected in summer 2019 to form a non-weighted ‘Social Vulnerability Index’ (SVI) at a census-tract level for Philadelphia. SVI demonstrated several clusters of neighborhoods with great disparities in socioeconomic factors. The census tracts with higher SVI tended to have higher levels of asthma and COPD (and vice versa). With improvements and acknowledgement of Philadelphia’s uniqueness, SVI of this kind may be used to inform policymakers on city planning (e.g. placement of future highways, industrial centers, etc.) to alleviate compounded respiratory/ pulmonary-related stresses on disadvantaged communities. Future analysis including green space coverage, other intersection between socioeconomic factors, air pollution, and health in Philadelphia, PA.more » « less
-
Effective stormwater management requires systems that operate safely and deliver improved environmental outcomes in a cost-effective manner. However, current design practices typically evaluate performance assuming that a given system starts empty and operates independently from nearby stormwater infrastructure. There is a conspicuous need for more realistic design-phase indicators of performance that consider a larger set of initial conditions and the effects of coupled dynamics. To this end, we apply a control-theoretic method, called reachability analysis, to produce a more objective measure of system robustness. We seek two primary contributions in this work. First, we demonstrate how the application of reachability analysis to a dynamic model of a stormwater network can characterize the set of initial conditions from which every element in the network can avoid overflowing under a given surface runoff signal of finite duration. This is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first published application of reachability analysis to stormwater systems. Our second contribution is to offer an interpretation of the outcomes of the proposed reachability analysis as a measure of system robustness that can provide useful information when making critical design decisions. We illustrate the effectiveness of this method in revealing the trade-offs of particular design choices relative to a desired level of robustness.more » « less
-
Abstract Rapid urbanization and escalating climate change impacts have heightened stormwater-related concerns (e.g., pluvial flooding) in cities. Understanding catchment dynamics and characteristics, including precise catchment mapping, is essential to accurate surface water monitoring and management. Traditionally, topography is the primary data set used to model surface water flow dynamics in undisturbed natural landscapes. However, urban systems also contain stormwater drainage infrastructure, which can alter catchment boundaries and runoff behavior. Acknowledging both natural and built environmental influences, this study introduces three GIS-based approaches to enhance urban catchment mapping: (1) Modifying DEM elevations at inlet locations; (2) Adjusting DEM elevations along pipeline paths; (3) Applying the QGRASS plug-in to systematically incorporate infrastructure data. Our evaluation using the geographical Friedman test (p > 0.05) and Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC = 0.80) confirms the statistical and spatial consistency among the studying methods. Coupled with onsite flow direction validation, these results support the feasibility and reliability of integrating elements of nature and built infrastructure in urban catchment mapping. The refined mapping approaches explored in this study offer improved and more accurate and efficient urban drainage catchment zoning, beyond using elevation and topographic data alone. Likewise, these methods bolster predictive stormwater management at catchment scales, ultimately strengthening urban stormwater and flooding resilience.more » « less
-
Abstract Untreated sewage discharges leading to environmental contamination are increasingly common in communities across the globe. The cause of these discharges ranges from sewer lines in disrepair, blockages, and in the era of more extreme wet weather events, the infiltration of stormwater into the system during heavy downpours. Regardless of the driver of these events, the aftermath results in raw sewage spilling into local waterways, city streets, and commercial and residential structures. Historical research in public health has thoroughly documented the connection between exposure to untreated sewage and waterborne disease. Recent research has detected antibiotic-resistant bacteria at wastewater treatment facilities at a time when deaths by antibiotic-resistant infections are on the rise. However, no research has explored the exposure pathways of antibiotic-resistant bacteria during sanitary sewer overflows and household-level sewage backups. In this commentary, we aim to introduce this new frontier of environmental health risks and disasters. To do this, we describe the history of modern sanitation and sewer infrastructure with a particular focus on wastewater infrastructure in the U.S. We also explore emerging risks and current methods for identifying antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment. We end with future directions for interdisciplinary scholarship at the nexus of urban planning, engineering, and public health by introducing the Water Emergency Team (WET) Project. WET is a community-based multi-method effort to identify environmental risks in the aftermath of household backups through (1) residential surveys, (2) indoor visual inspections, (3) environmental sampling, and (4) laboratory processing and reporting. Our hope is that by introducing this comprehensive approach to environmental risks analysis, other scholars will join us in this effort and ultimately towards addressing this grand challenge of our time.more » « less
