Drought-ravaged L.A. looking to 'sponge up' every bit of rainwater | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

Permaculture at work, I like

A tow truck lifts a trashed car off the street. A shopping cart lies abandoned in the alley.

This area of Los Angeles is what economists might call "economically disadvantaged." But one block in the heart of this struggling neighbourhood has gone through a $27-million retrofit.

Now, on this block, instead of channelling the rainwater run-off to the sea, the city is collecting it.

For a state that is in the midst of a massive three-year drought, and a city that has already begun water rationing, this is, almost literally, a godsend.

In the past, every time it rained, says Nancy Steele, the city was wasting precious water it didn't even use.

The executive director of the Council for Watershed Health, Steele helped plan the Elmer Avenue Neighbourhood Retrofit, and she points to what looks like a normal storm drain.

"There's no bottom," she says, in the retrofitted one.

"A normal storm drain would be all concrete. It would direct the water into the storm drain system, which would take the water into, in our case, the L.A. River."

But this new, retrofit storm drain has no concrete bottom and so it allows the water to dribble and percolate.

"So that provides the storage underneath the street for the water to flow through and then slowly soak into the ground."

more - http://www.cbc.ca/ne.....-1.3003645