River Issues and Stormwater Management Committee

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Images of our neighborhood rainbarrels:

News 4/11/07

This past month, Beyond Today received 25 rain barrels through a Chicago Conservation Corp grant. These rain barrels have all been delivered. We are experimenting with 3 different hook up systems because many residents want overflow to go directly back into the sewer because they can't handle the flooding. Some also want overflow to go to a second rainbarrel or rain garden, but need a larger overflow outlet. We'll provide photos and video once we get this all figured out.

We are making a new list of people who are willing to buy a rainbarrel. We hope the city might be willing to give us a bulk purchase price and deliver them all to the neighborhood,. Please email us if you'd like to be put on the waiting list. The city isn't keeping a waiting list (let us know if that changes.) Their rainbarrel distribution program requires that each person driver to Chicago and Sacramento to pick it up. We hope to simplify things a bit.

Green roofs save energy by reducing surrounding temperature and insulating, they save the river by absorbing rain and reducing sewage overflows into the vier, they provide habitat for birds and beneficial insects such as butterflies, and they are pretty. Here's more information on green roofs.

There are other ways to help reduce rainwater runoff. They include:

• Reducing the amount of pavement or replacing some of all with permeable pavestones, which allow the rain to soak through.
• Disconnecting gutter downspouts from the sewer (that's actually already required by law, but not everybody knows.) and,

• Installing Green Rooftop gardens to absorb the rain! We'll have more information on that later.

Rainbarrel photos: