Let 10,000 Rain Gardens and Green Roofs Bloom Green Blue Jobs Initiative invests in Ecosystem Services

(image from Low Impact Development.org)


Let 10,000 Rain Gardens and Green Rooftops Bloom!

President Obama is now in office. Yet something is missing in all the talk about green initiatives-- solar power investments, wind power and green transportation.

I think it is time for something that we can get started on immediately, that will lead to clean water, prevent pollution and create thousands of good paying jobs. What is it? A Green Initiative to grow green roofs and rain gardens, bioswales and pervious pavement.

Master gardeners, master naturalists, environmentalists can make common cause this year by insisting that President Obama spend billions of dollars across the US helping people grow green roofs, rain gardens, and getting rain barrels installed.

Imagine a green city/state -- and the blue green jobs we can create with a well thought out initiative.

Best of all are the benefits to our green Northwest. Ecosystem services can get restored through planting 10,000 rain gardens, green roofs, and installing rain barrels. Pavement that lets rain water through its pores to filter toxic waste instead of running off to the nearest stream, river and finally out to the ocean.

They'll help make up for the wetlands we have filled, the forests cleared for cities, the estuaries paved, dammed and diked.

And we need this initiative for more than greening our cities. We need millions of jobs to get people working, to create value in our cities that are suffering from THE highest unemployment in a generation.

We need a new green initiative to put some of the billions being poured from Obama's economic stimulus into our cities' ecosystem services.

Think about it from a practical side. Are you ready to stop spending billions of dollars cleaning up private enterprise and government pollution? — and your car's oily mess on the street, the pesticides your neighbor sprayed on their yard, your farmer's fertilizer and piles of manure, and city storm water overflows with raw sewage pouring into the sea?

This is the time to invest in simple, affordable green living with immediate return on investment for ourselves, for working people needing jobs.

We've learned a lot about the value of rain gardens, green roofs for spreading, soaking, and seeping storm water.

Think of the ecosystem services this would provide, the money saved from erosion and landslide prevention.

Let's set some goals here to grow back the ecosystem services we need today.

Let's plant 10,000 rain gardens in Washington from Bellingham to Vancouver,Washington and another 10,000 from Portland to Ashland Oregon.

I call it a small step toward reducing the damage we've done cutting forests to build cities.

Let's retrofit 10,000 rooftops with green roofs in our cities.

And let's tear up old pavement and start replacing it with permeable pavers and pavement.

I think if there isn't an organized push to get millions more in money to conservation districts, University extension service, block grants for these conservation initiatives, we're going to lose an opportunity to change the world.

Look around. The car company lobbyists and the highway lobby are not waiting for invitations to get stimulus money. they are clamoring up to talk with our Congress right now.

I think this initiative gets us a moment of solidarity with landscape contractors, architects, and green designers and tens of thousands of citizens who want to take the next step in low impact living.

What do you think?

Timothy Colman
Good Nature Publishing