RainWise achieves a major milestone!

June 21, 2018 / / No Comments

Congratulations to the RainWise program for hitting the major milestone of capturing rainwater from two million square feet of rooftops via rain gardens and cisterns! That’s roughly equal to the area of Volunteer Park!

Rain gardens are a natural solution to reducing stormwater pollution. Photo Credit: Marcela Gara, Resource Media.

See if your home qualifies for a RainWise rain garden or cistern!

Stormwater is the largest source of pollution in Seattle. When it rains, water carries pollutants such as fertilizer, motor oil and metals from roads, rooftops and other hard, impermeable surfaces into local waters and Puget Sound. And large volumes of stormwater can cause sewer systems to overflow, further polluting Puget Sound waters. This has repercussions for both public health and the health of salmon migrating through Puget Sound.

“I’m excited to be part of the RainWise program. Thank you ECOSS for helping me become a RainWise contractor.” – Gary Li, RainWise contractor (left). Photo Credit: Joycelyn Chui, ECOSS.

RainWise provides up to a 100% rebate on the costs of professionally installing rain gardens and cisterns. And ECOSS provides support throughout the installation process in 15 different languages for both contractors and residents.But you can help by having rain gardens and cisterns installed at home. Also known as green stormwater infrastructure, these natural solutions control stormwater and filter out pollutants, thus reducing stormwater pollution.

“Participating in the RainWise program is just one of the many ways that we can do our part in preserving what we enjoy most about our environment and all that nature has to offer us. I strongly encourage all to do it!” – Nina V., RainWise resident (right). Photo Credit: Nina V.

By having rain gardens and cisterns, not only do you add beauty to your home, but you also help promote a healthier environment. Together, we can reduce stormwater pollution and make Seattle RainWise.

Learn more about our RainWise work!

 

 

2010: The year of connecting to the community.

January 8, 2010 / / No Comments

I am beginning to lose count of all the events we are involved with this year through a sponsorship or partnership – and let me tell you, we are so happy to keep our calendars full with all the amazing events that will be taking place over the next year. Let me share a few of them with you:

Along with many other great environmental nonprofits and businesses, ECOSS is co-sponsoring Environmental Priorities Coalition‘s 2010 Environmental Lobby Day on Tuesday, January 26th in Olympia. Every year the Coalition organizes the community to talk with their legislators about specific environmental issues and priorities. This year, we will be working together for the passage of the Working for Clean Water bill, the Safe Baby Bottle Act, and to Sustain Environmental Protections in the Budget. If you doubt the power of civic engagement, read on! In the 2008, Environmental Priorities Coalition successfully passed all four of their environmental priorities that year. Register today and help make a difference.

A Green Carpet Event in Seattle? We love it, and will definitely attend the Seattle premiere of Mission: Sustainable on Thursday, February 11th. According to the website, “each show will feature a new individual nominated by friends and family for a sustainability makeover. Depending on the nominee’s lifestyle, three consultants will be chosen from our list of green experts to perform a makeover customized to the individual’s needs, desires, and walk of life.” The pilot features a South Seattle family – we can’t wait to see it!

On Thursday, March 4th, ECOSS will be one of the sponsors of Managing Stormwater in Washington, presented by the Northwest Environmental Business Council. As you may know, ECOSS has a strong stormwater program and we work with different agencies to offer local businesses free spill kits. Additionally, stormwater has been the focus of an ECOSSolutions session, during which changes to the new Industrial Stormwater General Permit were discussed.

ECOSS also signed on as a Community Partner and Exhibitor at the 2010 GoGreen Conference in Seattle, taking place Wednesday, April 21st. We couldn’t think of a more relevant conference for our members and supporters if we tried: the core focus of the conference is to motivate, inspire, and educate business owners to “go green” and become more sustainable. According to their founder Ericka Dickey, “As an action-oriented, non-typical conference, GoGreen ‘10 teaches tactical steps on how to “green” your business and provides actionable next steps to sustainability for business owners and decision makers. Attendees will learn from live success stories and participate in panel discussions geared to provide solid takeaways to make any size of business the most sustainable that it can be. The GoGreen Conference will feature over 45 business leader speakers and 12 different sessions on how to build sustainability into your business.”

Check out our Events page for more events, and we will keep you informed about where we will be and how we’re involved. We’re looking forward to sharing information about ECOSS events in 2010, too!

-Elise

Stormwater Solutions?

March 9, 2009 / / No Comments

On March 3rd, ECOSS‘s Executive Director Kevin joined Alex and me in Tacoma to be part of the Northwest Environmental Business Council‘s (NEBC) conference on Managing Stormwater in Washington.

Held at the Hotel Murano, the conference was well attended and designed to address the current issues in construction and industrial stormwater management.

The opening panel in the morning was a controversial one, but an interesting way to kick start the conference. The panel was comprised of Ken Johnson from Weyerhaeuser, Josh Baldi from the Washington State Department of Ecology, Van Collins from the Associated General Contractors, and Sue Joerger from the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance. These stakeholders addressed the potential impacts of upcoming changes in stormwater regulation, representing a diverse spectrum of differing opinions on how to manage stormwater. Understanding the relationship between these parties made the tension in the room quite palpable.

The rest of the day was divided along two tracks, one for those interested in industrial stormwater and the other for people involved with the management of stormwater from construction sites.

There were several big take away points that I thought were important to address in this blog. Firstly, the copper and zinc benchmarks are going to be lowered drastically. Some of the numbers being thrown around were 14 ug/L and 63 ug/L respectively. This is a considerable change, which leads me to the second take away point addressed in the afternoon by Calvin Noling from StormwateRx . StomwateRx designs and installs industrial stormwater treatment and filtration systems, but during his presentation on pollution removal efficiency he declared that filtration systems alone will most likely not be sufficient to achieve the newly proposed copper and zinc benchmarks.

Finally, I wanted to address the overall content of the conference. Every single solution presented to manage stormwater was focused on dealing with water that had already been polluted. There was no discussion about prevention. All of the exhibitors were presenting highly engineered treatment devices, but there was no one there talking about how to keep stormwater from being polluted in the first place.

Americans have a habit of relying heavily on technological solutions to our problems. This alone is not the problem. However, what I am concerned about is we are talking exclusively about engineered technology as the solution to stormwater management. With drastically changing benchmarks, we are finding that technology alone cannot save us. We need to start thinking about stormwater in a more systemic way, relying less on technology to clean up our pollution and more on not polluting in the first place. Stormwater is as much an issue of source control and responsible purchasing as that of engineering and technological solutions.

-Todd Hunsdorfer