By Conference of Mayors Vice President Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter
May 14, 2012

Imagine a city thriving from an infusion of nature – a place where residents are surrounded by shade bestowing trees on streets and rain gardens are as common as storm drains on every school, parking lot and park; a place where local waterways are clean, beautiful and calming and support diverse fish populations and natural ecosystems. This is the vision I maintain for Philadelphia – the vision that I have pledged to make a reality to transform Philadelphia into the greenest city in the nation.

It takes imagination and passion to overcome the multiple challenges that confront urban centers seeking solutions to flooding, combined sewer overflows, and tasked with the protection and restoration of our river and streams – and to do so in a way that supports a livable, green and expanding city. These challenges cry out for the holistic integration of environmental protection with responsible land use and infrastructure improvements.

Philadelphia has a magnificent infrastructure that was designed and built in the late 19th century — in its time an unparalleled public works vision that resulted in the reduction of cholera and typhoid epidemics, facilitated the industrial revolution, and lay the foundation for the development of Philadelphia's neighborhoods as they appear today. We know that our current "gray" system of sewer pipes alone may not be adequate for today's Clean Water Act requirements nor the capacity demand placed on these pipes by intense rainstorms that have plagued some neighborhoods with basement flooding over the past decade.

The question that Philadelphia grappled with concerned the optimal solution to our urban challenges – do we solve our current problems by trying to reinvent the past, or do we come up with modern solutions that consider sustainability aspects to urban life and the environment? We realized that our current infrastructure was designed for a world that did not know climate change, or recognize the need to reuse our finite resources or have any real understanding of the value of ecosystems as they relate to citizen quality of life. Therefore, we chose the latter and embraced a cost effective approach that transforms the city block by block, parcel by parcel, by adding a natural layer to our harsh urban surfaces.

On April 10, Philadelphia and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) joined together to celebrate an historic agreement that recognizes Philadelphia's transformative approach to stormwater management as characterized by its Green City Clean Waters Plan – a richly symbolic action that also marks the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act and signifies just how far we have come to claming our waterways as our natural treasures.

I am proud to say that Philadelphia is setting the national standard for smarter, greener ways to clean our precious waterways. Philadelphia – and the EPA – believe that green infrastructure is often the best and most cost-effective way to transform our rivers and streams to public amenities that are fishable, swimmable, safe and beautiful. Philadelphia is pioneering a broad investment in green stormwater management practices that not only reduce the overflow of combined sewers to our waterways, but also result in the enhancement of communities and the overall environment.

Green infrastructure methods stop rain where it falls – retaining it or allowing it to filter back into the ground, rather than becoming runoff pollution that contaminates waterways and triggers sewer overflows. These methods can take a variety of forms – from green roofs, to increased park space, porous pavement, roadside plantings, cisterns and stormwater tree trenches. PWD's key to realizing the Green City Clean Waters Plan is in managing stormwater as a resource. Treating stormwater as a resource represents a major paradigm shift for the city since traditional approaches to managing stormwater consider runoff a waste product to be collected and transported away from a site as quickly as possible.

In that vein, Philadelphia and the EPA have pledged to join forces in an exciting partnership that will inform the designs and projects that create thousands of green acres – acres that will soak up the rain as Mother Nature once did. We have committed over $2 billion over the next 25 years to not only make our waterways cherished and thriving destinations, but also to use our citizen investment in a way that provides multiple additional community benefits that also further the city's Greenworks Plan and supports the vision of numerous civic and community partners for a truly sustainable city.

The implementation of Green City Clean Waters will be the largest single investment of environmental dollars in the city. The plan calls for transformation of one-third of rain adverse surfaces in the city such as streets, parking lots, sidewalks and buildings – into green practices that capture the rain as Mother Nature does best – providing more capacity in our existing systems. The plan also calls for the expansion of the Water Department's three wastewater treatment facilities to allow them to treat more stormwater collected by pipes and to revitalize our waterways.

The public investments outlined in Green City Clean Waters will not only result in clean and beautiful waterways that meet Philadelphia's obligations under the Clean Water Act, but they also provide many additional tangible benefits to the citizens of the city. Outcomes associated with the cumulative impact of green stormwater infrastructure include multiple environmental, social and economic benefits, such as improved air quality, increased recreational opportunities and higher property values, especially when compared to traditional underground infrastructure approaches. In fact, a cost-benefit analysis conducted in support of the plan indicated that over 40 years the city woud realize over $2 in benefits for every $1 invested.

Green City Clean Waters is an all-inclusive plan that embraces and thrives on the participation of all city agencies. But it is our civic and environmental partners that have been the incredible advocates for this plan – assisting the city with implementing projects and energizing our citizens to the plan's vision and recruiting them as partners in its implementation.

From its inception, Philadelphia was envisioned as a city built around green spaces and abundant, nurturing waterways. My pledge is to honor William Penn's forward thinking design for Philadelphia as a "green country towne."