Posted in stormwater, stormwater wetlands, tagged bayous, parks, stormwater wetlands, trails, transportation, wetlands on June 20, 2013| 1 Comment »
Water lilies in the Mason Park wetlands (Photo: Milt Gray), public bikes (Wikimedia Commons)
Once in a while, a newspaper article about pedestrian bridges makes a brush with stormwater management. Sounds pretty random, right?
This recent one in the Houston Chronicle doesn’t spell out the connections between transportation planning and managing stormwater, but we know that vehicles are a source of pollutants which wash off roads into storm drains. (more…)
Posted in Galveston Bay, runoff pollution, stormwater, tagged bacteria, Dickinson Bayou, runoff, septic system, water quality on June 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Dickinson Bayou, like many of our coastal streams and bayous, is listed as impaired by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for having high levels of bacteria. This short video is about the issues facing Dickinson Bayou, especially from malfunctioning septic systems, but really the story is the same for many other water bodies.
Posted in drought, native plants, Resilience, Uncategorized, watersmart, tagged compost, drought, lawn reduction, mulch, native plants on June 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »
“There are two ways to face the rainless weeks. One is to water, and the other is merely not to.” Elizabeth Lawrence, a Southern gardener.
Perhaps this is a bit too simplified, but we do have to face the fact that in a world of overburdened water supplies and weather extremes, conserving water in the landscape whenever and however we can has never been more critical. During July, August, and September, Texans’ increase their water use by as much as 58%, with half of what is used to irrigate landscapes being wasted due to over-watering or runoff. The projection for the Houston area is that the population will double by the year 2030, but our water supplies are finite leading us to realize that even though we may get all the rain we need, more people means water shortages–frog-strangling deluges or not. (more…)
John Jacob
Steven Mikulencak
Charriss York
Watershed Texas 