Mainstreaming Green Infrastructure
Courtesy of Millburn Environmental Facebook
Mainstreaming Green Infrastructure is a program aimed at moving green stormwater infrastructure practices into the mainstream. Years ago, green-building standards such as LEED were considered eccentric and expensive. Now, they are mainstream – understood to be the smart way to build. The same thing is beginning to happen with green infrastructure.
To accelerate and facilitate the mainstreaming process, New Jersey future is working with towns and developers; assembling teams of experts to provide education, training and technical assistance; facilitating demonstration projects that show innovative and effective use of green infrastructure; and working with state agencies to update and improve rules, manuals, standards, and programs to facilitate and incentive the use of green infrastructure.
Download a factsheet describing this program.
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See and navigate the NJ Developers’ Green Infrastructure Guide.
Case Studies
New Jersey Future is compiling a list of successful green infrastructure installations in New Jersey. If you are an engineer, developer, or manager of a green infrastructure project you would like to highlight, click here.
Resources to help accelerate your own green infrastructure project can be found here.
Our Project
Our work with towns is focused on the environmentally fragile New Jersey’s Highlands and Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer (including the Pinelands) regions, where we will encourage the use of green infrastructure as a mainstream practice in growth and redevelopment areas. Click here to find out more about the pilot towns.
Developers’ Green Infrastructure Task Force
New Jersey Future has partnered with the New Jersey Builders Association to convene the Developers’ Green Infrastructure Task Force, which helps New Jersey’s developers and their design professionals learn about, finance, and build green infrastructure. The task force includes developers, engineers, green infrastructure experts, and attorneys who advise and assist this important work and act as ambassadors to the industry.
The Task force has produced the Developers’ Green Infrastructure Guide, which answers questions about GI, including what it is, how it works, what are its costs and benefits, why it make good business sense. Click here to access the NJ Developers’ Green Infrastructure Guide. To express interest in the Developers’ Green Infrastructure Task Force, email Kandyce Perry (kperry
njfuture
org) .
New Jersey Future is supporting two green infrastructure demonstration projects – one public-sector and one private-sector – to serve as a showcase of green infrastructure. Stay tuned for the engineering plans.
State Agencies
New Jersey Future is working with state agencies to update and improve rules, manuals, standards, and programs to facilitate and incentive the use of green infrastructure
WHAT is green infrastructure?
Green infrastructure (GI) is the use of stormwater management practices that use or mimic the natural water cycle, rather than pipes and storm sewers, to manage rain, stormwater and snowmelt. Green infrastructure enables this water to soak into the ground where it falls or captures it for a beneficial re-use such as irrigation or flushing toilets. Examples include street trees, pervious pavement, rain gardens, rain barrels and cisterns, green roofs, vegetated swales and bioretention basins. Green infrastructure saves and cleans water, while uninterrupted runoff results in pollution and flooding.
WHY design projects using green infrastructure?
GI cleans and conserves the world’s most precious resource, reduces flooding, improves public health, provides jobs, raises property values, beautifies neighborhoods and and supports wildlife.
Economy
Green infrastructure has been shown to increase property values and rental premiums, and returns water to aquifers critical to agriculture. Green infrastructure investments provide jobs that require no prior experience.
Environment
In addition to cleaning and conserving water, green infrastructure improves air quality, reduces greenhouse gases, restores ecosystems, replenishes aquifers, and prevents runoff pollution. Native plantings in GI installations support pollinators, songbirds and other beneficial wildlife
Society
Green areas provide both physical and mental health benefits. People are happier living in places with trees and greenways. Green infrastructure supports walkable communities, aids in traffic calming, provides for outdoor recreation and community gardens, and reduces the effects of excess heat.
WHERE are we working?
Our work with towns and demonstration projects is focused on New Jersey’s environmentally fragile Highlands and Kirkwood Cohansey Aquifer area (including the Pinelands) regions, where we encourage the use of green infrastructure as a mainstream practice in growth and redevelopment areas. Our work with developers is statewide.
WHO are we working with?
- Municipalities
- Developers
- Engineers and landscape architects
- Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program
- New Jersey Builders Association
- Regional planning entities
- Nonprofit partners
Interested in working with us? Please contact Kandyce Perry (kperrynjfutureorg) .
Resources
There is a wealth of information about green infrastructure, but here are some resources we’d like to highlight. Click here to view our resources.
Future Facts
The partnership between New Jersey Future and the New Jersey Builders Association provided ample evidence at this year’s Atlantic Builders Convention that its focus on incorporating green infrastructure into development plans is having an impact.
The Jersey Water Works awards program recognizes sustainable solutions to the state’s water challenges and welcomes two additional sponsoring organizations.
An overview of several tools that allow developers and local officials to understand how various green infrastructure practices can fit into a development project, and what the impact would be of development on stormwater infrastructure.
New Jersey Future has been working with Municipal Action Teams in three cities to educate residents on environmental issues and to help implement green infrastructure practices that will reduce combined-sewer overflows by keeping stormwater out of sewer systems.
A session at the New Jersey Future Redevelopment Forum examined how stormwater utilities work in other states, what their benefits are, why New Jersey may want to consider authorizing them, and where the state is in that process.
See all Future Facts and Articles in this category »
Much of New Jersey Future’s work to mainstream green infrastructure
is supported by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.
