Mitigating park flooding through infrastructure design
Many parks, recreation, and athletic facilities serve as community hubs where residents gather to compete, play, socialize, and enjoy the outdoors. These prized community assets can play an even bigger role by incorporating infrastructure to manage stormwater, mitigate flooding, and achieve water-quality goals. Addressing stormwater challenges and needs in parks is a great opportunity for communities across the country, from the water-rich Northeast to the drought-stricken Southwest and everywhere in between.
Many of these facilities are in floodplains, near streams and rivers, or embedded in dense neighborhoods. This makes them ideal locations to house a wide range of infrastructure, including stormwater retention and treatment systems, or as a floodplain. When properly designed in alignment with stormwater-management goals, such facilities can become an essential piece of a community’s stormwater-management strategy.