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ellyssianFacts of life time. Periodically, there can be floods in the best of places. It happens. Factor in the rivers, their cantankerousness at being forced to stay in their banks like good little schoolchildren, and it happens. Sooner or later those running waters get ticked off at the impertinence of man and all that dam(n) concrete, and woosh, over the bank it is, to have fun with the spirits of the woodlands. They all drink deep, party the night away, and then, besodden, head back to bed, awaiting one heck of a hangover. When those ffolk of the woods get up the next night, they find all manner of flotsam and jetsam that is now considerably less floaty. They get on with their lives, as we scratch our head and wonder why it was this happened to us and who can we sue to prevent it happening again and then we forget about it so we can get back to important things, like finding out how Paris Hilton is coping with life after jail.
Catastrophic floods that just sweep out of nowhere and sweep away Piglets and Poohs and all manner of other things don't happen all that often.
Yeah, that's true. They're rare beasts, the unexpected flood.
Expected floods, however, are a whole different ballgame.
Expected flood type Alpha is best exemplified by the areas alongside a river like the Mississippi (in its prior untamed life). Floods like that are pretty much seasonal, regular events you can set watches or, at the least, calendars by. It's pretty easy to say "Well just don't live there" and that's a part of it; an easy way to avoid such flooding is to not live in an area prone to such things. These areas were originally settled because of their proximity to the river. That's commerce, and it doesn't take a lot of dead dinosaurs to pave it. There's beauty there - more so, by my book, if you're not right in the heart of all that commerce. You can't exactly have a nice river view if you're not within view of the river, and competition for that view will always lead someone to build a place even closer as an act of pure one-upmanship. With that beauty and commerce, comes risk - live in a flood zone, you'll get flooded.
Sooner or later, folks will live in such an area who aren't prepared to go with the flow, so to speak, and don't like the risk but want the location their way. Up pops dams and locks and other stuff, as mankind wrestles with Mother Nature. This generally involves large pieces of pipe to knock her unconscious, and then some custom fitted cement shoes. All smug and safe and risk-less, man rather forgets that he may have won the arm wrestling match, but, when the stars align the right way, that arm wrestling match just means that the deluge that follows is far more destructive than it had been in a prior life. Taming a river is really the act of illusion, and, unfortunately, when that illusion is exposed, people are usually dead.
Expected flood type Beta makes Alpha, which is inevitably downstream, worse. Some of the same hubris that can turn a regular normal Alpha into an even nastier killing machine than it would be under normal circumstances, creates Beta in the first place.
This guy, Beta, is what's doing a lot of the damage these days. Beta happens when people decide they like lawns better than forests, or, worse, when they're part way through implementing such a change. Chop down the trees for a while, and then wonder why all your precious trucked-in fill keeps washing away. Like anything running downhill, it gains speed - and gathers like-minded friends - along the way. Next thing you know, all the water in the known universe is clogging tiny little drainage ditches, frothing up streams that churn away at their banks, and suddenly you have flooding where you never did before and you wonder why this might have happened.
This type of flooding is filling basements across the country, turning subdivisions into pond bottoms for a little while, and, as mentioned, causing those big rivers to get all riled up and take it out on whatever they can reach.
~ ~ ~
Unless you're sitting on the banks of a large river, you're impacting those beta floods. You own land? Your fault. You vote? Your fault. Of course, you can change that: you own land? You can solve the problem. You vote? Ditto.
Some things you can do - or encourage to have done:
- Allow as much of that precious lawn as you can spare - especially that which makes an appearance on a slope - to return to forest, or a reasonable specimen thereof
- Allow another portion of land to become meadow; not quite as efficient as a no-holds-barred woodland, but better than that low trimmed stuff that's (possibly) only marginally more eco-friendly than AstroTurf
- Replace a portion of that precious cement or asphalt driveway or patio with permeable pavers
Some citified folks might argue that they don't even have a lawn. This may be true, and it's a sad fact. However, they should treasure their parks, and get involved with making sure those green spaces are around and as healthy as possible. Of course, they have even more concrete and asphalt around, so they should be asking why they don't see more permeable pavers around town, ideally filtering water that goes down each and every storm drain.
~ ~ ~
Several things need to be kept in mind if you want to change what excess water does when it colides with a piece of property - yours, your municipality's, or otherwise.
First off, unless you have a ludicrously large budget, you're not going to go from a Run Off King to an Eco-Savant in one massive project. Expecting to solve all problems all at once perfectly and once and forever shows that 1) you are human; and 2) you have a future in politics, where a lack of realism is considered an admirable trait. The property forms a small portion of the environment, and, although changes to it can make a positive impact, they can also have an adverse impact. Check out what the situation is, and tackle it bit by bit.
For instance, when I moved in, the builders had packed the lawn areas into a hugeous clay brick. Don't want that backhoe or bulldozer to sink in, so add some impervious fill and tamp that sucker down. Water just sheeted off that and joined the throng, rushing down the street and into my neighbor's basements. Water that collected on the roof just helped encourage it along. Some of it threatened to wash out my septic system. The first thing I took care of didn't help the basements down the line, but it wouldn't do them any good if my septic washed down there as well. A simple ditch, lined with rock in places, helped water from the roof and most lawn areas miss the sandmound and, at the same time, avoid sweeping down the driveway next door.
The next stage was to plant a better grade of grass with deeper roots. At the same time, and at no additional cost, I carefully maintained several critical areas along the stream path by letting them grow completely wild. Took a lot of effort on my part, sitting back and watching them do whatever they want, but it's worth it. To be fair, I added a few key shrubs that are known for being heavy drinkers, but they're still a few years away from making a difference. Even now, though, when the banks of Stone Stream are deep under rushing water, barely a trickle gets to the street, and the mid-section of that driveway next door hasn't budged in quite a while.
After you handle your own immediate needs, and get other things that will work themeselves out over time started, you can look at bigger parts of the project.
For me, the most expensive part will be dealing with the 300' long driveway. Currently, it's crushed stone. That gets some absorption, but it's packed down fairly tight so it's not as wonderful as you might think. That, and probably a ton or two of it is now up against the foundations of neighbors places downstream.
I've wrestled with what to do with the surface for a while now. The gravel, when done right, is supposed to be replaced twice a year. I did half the driveway for a few hundred dollars, so we're talking somewhere around a grand a year for maintenance. Not that most folks do that twice yearly maintenance, more realistically, it's done every five years or so, leaving the base layer packed to the nigh-invincible state.
Neighbors have been turning their gravel into asphalt, hoping the assessors office takes a while to get out our way and raise the taxes, and not thinking it a bad thing that they just increased the runoff downstream. One guy likes his gravel, says it keeps it countryish, instead of all city-like, and I agree. At the same time, all that gravel washing away and leaving ruts and ripping cars out of alignment isn't all that great a deal. Another neighbor - with a much smaller driveway - went with pavers. I like the look, and, if you go with something more natural in color, doesn't look so out of place.
Hadn't really put much thought into it recently because pavers cost an awful lot initally, although they have less maintenance than gravel or asphalt, but then I came across some information on permeable pavers and I'm thinking I may do something with them.
Thus far, in my explorations, I've come across two types. One consists of a regular geometric shape, kind of like three honeycombs, offset a bit. The way they fit together there is space in between that allows water to soak through and go to ground. They can be used for heavy traffic - I've seen them used for city streets and parking areas. Another type looks like loose gravel but is actually real live stone, all held together - by magic, or some other patented process - and water runs right through. They can support traffic, although, from what I gathered, not nearly as much weight as the other type.
So one or both of those materials may feature in my driveway plans at some time in the future. As with the other portions of the project, I'll likely start slow - maybe do the bottom of the driveway and work up, or vice versa, doing a little bit every year. Interesting stuff.
And that way, when Pooh and Piglet are floating through the Hundred Acre Wood, they'll at least have one spot where water doesn't get floodier and floodier all the time.
Catastrophic floods that just sweep out of nowhere and sweep away Piglets and Poohs and all manner of other things don't happen all that often.
Yeah, that's true. They're rare beasts, the unexpected flood.
Expected floods, however, are a whole different ballgame.
Expected flood type Alpha is best exemplified by the areas alongside a river like the Mississippi (in its prior untamed life). Floods like that are pretty much seasonal, regular events you can set watches or, at the least, calendars by. It's pretty easy to say "Well just don't live there" and that's a part of it; an easy way to avoid such flooding is to not live in an area prone to such things. These areas were originally settled because of their proximity to the river. That's commerce, and it doesn't take a lot of dead dinosaurs to pave it. There's beauty there - more so, by my book, if you're not right in the heart of all that commerce. You can't exactly have a nice river view if you're not within view of the river, and competition for that view will always lead someone to build a place even closer as an act of pure one-upmanship. With that beauty and commerce, comes risk - live in a flood zone, you'll get flooded.
Sooner or later, folks will live in such an area who aren't prepared to go with the flow, so to speak, and don't like the risk but want the location their way. Up pops dams and locks and other stuff, as mankind wrestles with Mother Nature. This generally involves large pieces of pipe to knock her unconscious, and then some custom fitted cement shoes. All smug and safe and risk-less, man rather forgets that he may have won the arm wrestling match, but, when the stars align the right way, that arm wrestling match just means that the deluge that follows is far more destructive than it had been in a prior life. Taming a river is really the act of illusion, and, unfortunately, when that illusion is exposed, people are usually dead.
Expected flood type Beta makes Alpha, which is inevitably downstream, worse. Some of the same hubris that can turn a regular normal Alpha into an even nastier killing machine than it would be under normal circumstances, creates Beta in the first place.
This guy, Beta, is what's doing a lot of the damage these days. Beta happens when people decide they like lawns better than forests, or, worse, when they're part way through implementing such a change. Chop down the trees for a while, and then wonder why all your precious trucked-in fill keeps washing away. Like anything running downhill, it gains speed - and gathers like-minded friends - along the way. Next thing you know, all the water in the known universe is clogging tiny little drainage ditches, frothing up streams that churn away at their banks, and suddenly you have flooding where you never did before and you wonder why this might have happened.
This type of flooding is filling basements across the country, turning subdivisions into pond bottoms for a little while, and, as mentioned, causing those big rivers to get all riled up and take it out on whatever they can reach.
~ ~ ~
Unless you're sitting on the banks of a large river, you're impacting those beta floods. You own land? Your fault. You vote? Your fault. Of course, you can change that: you own land? You can solve the problem. You vote? Ditto.
Some things you can do - or encourage to have done:
- Allow as much of that precious lawn as you can spare - especially that which makes an appearance on a slope - to return to forest, or a reasonable specimen thereof
- Allow another portion of land to become meadow; not quite as efficient as a no-holds-barred woodland, but better than that low trimmed stuff that's (possibly) only marginally more eco-friendly than AstroTurf
- Replace a portion of that precious cement or asphalt driveway or patio with permeable pavers
Some citified folks might argue that they don't even have a lawn. This may be true, and it's a sad fact. However, they should treasure their parks, and get involved with making sure those green spaces are around and as healthy as possible. Of course, they have even more concrete and asphalt around, so they should be asking why they don't see more permeable pavers around town, ideally filtering water that goes down each and every storm drain.
~ ~ ~
Several things need to be kept in mind if you want to change what excess water does when it colides with a piece of property - yours, your municipality's, or otherwise.
First off, unless you have a ludicrously large budget, you're not going to go from a Run Off King to an Eco-Savant in one massive project. Expecting to solve all problems all at once perfectly and once and forever shows that 1) you are human; and 2) you have a future in politics, where a lack of realism is considered an admirable trait. The property forms a small portion of the environment, and, although changes to it can make a positive impact, they can also have an adverse impact. Check out what the situation is, and tackle it bit by bit.
For instance, when I moved in, the builders had packed the lawn areas into a hugeous clay brick. Don't want that backhoe or bulldozer to sink in, so add some impervious fill and tamp that sucker down. Water just sheeted off that and joined the throng, rushing down the street and into my neighbor's basements. Water that collected on the roof just helped encourage it along. Some of it threatened to wash out my septic system. The first thing I took care of didn't help the basements down the line, but it wouldn't do them any good if my septic washed down there as well. A simple ditch, lined with rock in places, helped water from the roof and most lawn areas miss the sandmound and, at the same time, avoid sweeping down the driveway next door.
The next stage was to plant a better grade of grass with deeper roots. At the same time, and at no additional cost, I carefully maintained several critical areas along the stream path by letting them grow completely wild. Took a lot of effort on my part, sitting back and watching them do whatever they want, but it's worth it. To be fair, I added a few key shrubs that are known for being heavy drinkers, but they're still a few years away from making a difference. Even now, though, when the banks of Stone Stream are deep under rushing water, barely a trickle gets to the street, and the mid-section of that driveway next door hasn't budged in quite a while.
After you handle your own immediate needs, and get other things that will work themeselves out over time started, you can look at bigger parts of the project.
For me, the most expensive part will be dealing with the 300' long driveway. Currently, it's crushed stone. That gets some absorption, but it's packed down fairly tight so it's not as wonderful as you might think. That, and probably a ton or two of it is now up against the foundations of neighbors places downstream.
I've wrestled with what to do with the surface for a while now. The gravel, when done right, is supposed to be replaced twice a year. I did half the driveway for a few hundred dollars, so we're talking somewhere around a grand a year for maintenance. Not that most folks do that twice yearly maintenance, more realistically, it's done every five years or so, leaving the base layer packed to the nigh-invincible state.
Neighbors have been turning their gravel into asphalt, hoping the assessors office takes a while to get out our way and raise the taxes, and not thinking it a bad thing that they just increased the runoff downstream. One guy likes his gravel, says it keeps it countryish, instead of all city-like, and I agree. At the same time, all that gravel washing away and leaving ruts and ripping cars out of alignment isn't all that great a deal. Another neighbor - with a much smaller driveway - went with pavers. I like the look, and, if you go with something more natural in color, doesn't look so out of place.
Hadn't really put much thought into it recently because pavers cost an awful lot initally, although they have less maintenance than gravel or asphalt, but then I came across some information on permeable pavers and I'm thinking I may do something with them.
Thus far, in my explorations, I've come across two types. One consists of a regular geometric shape, kind of like three honeycombs, offset a bit. The way they fit together there is space in between that allows water to soak through and go to ground. They can be used for heavy traffic - I've seen them used for city streets and parking areas. Another type looks like loose gravel but is actually real live stone, all held together - by magic, or some other patented process - and water runs right through. They can support traffic, although, from what I gathered, not nearly as much weight as the other type.
So one or both of those materials may feature in my driveway plans at some time in the future. As with the other portions of the project, I'll likely start slow - maybe do the bottom of the driveway and work up, or vice versa, doing a little bit every year. Interesting stuff.
And that way, when Pooh and Piglet are floating through the Hundred Acre Wood, they'll at least have one spot where water doesn't get floodier and floodier all the time.
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Date: 2007-07-07 12:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-07 12:51 pm (UTC)