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Posted October 4th, 2011 by nate_cormier
Thank you to Mette Hanson, interpretive planner and artist, for her beautiful work on a series of etched aluminum benchbacks at Duwamish Hill Preserve. These simple seating areas act as touchstones for education and interpretation during visits to the Hill. Their themes were synched up with views from each sandstone bench. We’re really pleased with the interpretive artwork itself and also the fact that it allowed us to forgo stand-alone panels so the landscape itself can tell the real story.
Posted September 14th, 2011 by Brice Maryman
Bell Street Park Pavement Textures
Hewitt did some cool mock-ups of the pavement textures we’re considering for the rumbly middle tones in bell street park. We’re leaning toward the finer grain of the two and experimenting with convex and concave in terms of durability, accessibility, drainage, visuals, etc.
Posted September 13th, 2011 by Brice Maryman
Several SvR staff members took in a beautiful late-summer evening on the nearly completed Winslow Way as part of the Bainbridge Island Downtown Association’s Winslow in White fundraiser. Close to a thousand people–dressed in white–dined al fresco in the middle of the street as the sun set. Though the plantings aren’t in yet, the street is already serving as a wonderful stage for the community to come together and celebrate.
Posted September 9th, 2011 by Brice Maryman
SvR Design is honored to have been awarded the contract for King County’s Barton Basin Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Control with Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) project. This precedent-setting project will reimagine a portion of the existing rights-of-way in the 1,111 acre basin to include, bioretention swales, street trees, amended soils and other green infrastructure facilities. These will be installed along approximately 32 blocks in the Sunrise Heights and Westwood neighborhoods with the goal of reducing overall stormwater loads to lower the incidence of combined sewer discharges.
A typical residential streetscape within the Barton Basin before undergoing the green stormwater infrastructure retrofit.
“Across the United States, cities are looking for cost-effective, environmentally-responsible solutions for reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs) each year. At the same time, they are also looking for ways to reduce polluted stormwater runoff from their roadways. The Barton Basin project will accomplish both of these goals, providing an exceptional case study for making limited public funds go further,” said Peg Staeheli, ASLA, SvR’s Principal in Charge for the project. “King County could have spent one dollar and gotten one dollar’s worth in return; instead we’re getting three dollars back in return by creating jobs, adding real value to the neighborhood and increasing overall regional resilience.”
CSOs occur when existing combined sewer pipes are overwhelmed by heavy rain events, resulting in the release of sewage into local water bodies. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 850 billion gallons of untreated effluent come from CSOs every year. Washington State’s Department of Ecology estimates that CSOs account for 3.3 billion gallons of untreated discharge into the state’s waterways each year. In 2008, the Barton Basin had four overflows resulting in 4 million gallons of untreated effluent.
A typical residential streetscape within the Barton Basin after the green stormwater infrastructure retrofit with raingardens, street trees and swales added between the sidewalk and curb to help relieve pressure on the piped sewer system.
The Barton Basin project aims to reduce that number of overflows to one per year by controlling the rate at which stormwater flows into combined sewer pipes. By trapping and infiltrating this stormwater closer to where it falls, the Barton Basin project will reduce the amount of stormwater entering the combined pipe system, and reduce overall energy devoted to pumping and treatment.
“The conventional engineering approach to solving CSOs would have been to add a lot of storage capacity for pipes, vaults and other large concrete structures,” according to Steve Burke, PE, the project’s lead civil engineer. “That type of bottom-of-the-pipe solution solves the CSO problem, but it also misses an opportunity to bring a more holistic solution forward to the community. By contrast, the top-of-the-pipe, low impact development solutions that we’ll be implementing in Barton Basin will reduce the amount of water flowing into the piped sewer system, create green jobs, improve biological diversity, filter polluted stormwater runoff, increase walkability and accelerate adaptation to a wetter environment due to climate change, just to name a few of its many benefits.”
The project is expected to be designed in the next year and a half, with construction completed by 2015.
Posted August 8th, 2011 by Brice Maryman
Let’s Do This, a new education campaign, asks King County residents to get involved in creating healthier communities
Exciting changes are happening in King County to prevent tobacco- and obesity-related diseases, two leading causes of preventable death in King County.
Through a Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant, SvR is leading a team of consultants–Alta Planning and Design, CollinsWoerman and Urban Food Link–helping six King County cities consider ways to create healthier communities through improved food access, transportation and land use. The goal of these policy changes will be to make the healthy choice the easy choice. In this case, the healthy choice is known as HEAL: Healthy Eating and Active Living. These are policy-level interventions that will change communities, especially underserved neighborhoods by creating more healthy options and less unhealthy ones for hundreds of thousands of residents.
More than a third of the deaths in King County – about 4,000 each year — are a result of smoking, unhealthy eating and lack of physical activity. Persons in the most disadvantaged communities are three to four times more likely to be obese or smoke compared to the well-off neighborhoods.
To combat this trend, Public Health – Seattle & King County and more than 50 partners across the County are working to create sustainable community changes that increase access to physical activity and healthy food, decrease access to unhealthy food options, decrease tobacco use and limit exposure to secondhand smoke, particularly in areas where the need is greatest. The SvR team is working with the cities of Redmond, Snoqualmie, SeaTac, DesMoines, Burien and Federal Way to change zoning to allow more access to healthy food choices, to improve non-motorized transportation connections within and between these cities, to write Complete Streets ordinances and to better align land use code with public health goals.
Let’s Do This Campaign
Let’s Do This, the Public Health campaign that supports the on-going CPPW work, officially launches in early August. The campaign supports the ongoing Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CCPW) obesity and tobacco prevention efforts underway in King County.
As the Let’s Do This campaign explains, people can’t make healthy choices if they aren’t available. The campaign focuses on the relationship between neighborhood and health, notes inequities in our county and inspires residents to become involved. The campaign features Mia, an eleven-year-old King County resident who wants to be a healthy kid and notices aspects of her neighborhood that make it difficult to be healthy.
Let’s Do This materials include a 30-second cable television ad in English and Spanish, three on-line videos, online, radio and ethnic media advertising, posters, billboards and a website. For more information about the campaign, to download posters and to view additional videos about sugary drinks, safe walking routes to school, and healthy retail, visit www.letsdothiskingcounty.org.
You also can help spread the word about the campaign on Facebook and Twitter.
Posted June 23rd, 2011 by Tom von Schrader
SvR was instrumental in the success of a couple recent complete/green street workshops. Tom von Schrader and Nathan Polanski led a panel on policy, practice and integration at the Kitsap Complete Streets Leadership Forum in Poulsbo in early June. Then the next week Tom, Nathan and Amalia Leighton headed down to beautiful Paso Robles, California to lead a Complete/Green Streets Workshop sponsered by the City of Paso Robles, UC Davis’ LID Initiative and the Central Coast Water Board. Both workshops were at capacity and lively discussions were a testament to the growing recognition that our public right of ways are a valuable resource that should be balanced for a wide variety of users and uses.
Posted June 16th, 2011 by Brice Maryman
Over on Winslow Way, the SilvaCell’s are being installed. For Winslow, these were the perfect technologies to achieve two important goals. First, to integrate all of the ecosystem services that a robust tree canopy provides, and second, to calm traffic by visually narrowing the roadway since the trees are located in the parking zone of the street. We also needed to make sure that Winslow Way was durable and flexible enough to survive the wear and tear that Bainbridge’s host of community events provide throughout the year. Pat from DeepRoot was out on site during installation and took a number of pictures of the process. You can find all of them on their flickr stream, but we’ve culled a few here that shows the installation over time.
Posted June 14th, 2011 by Brice Maryman
From our friend Lisa Town comes these pictures from her recent trip to Placencia, Belize where, according to the guide books, you can find the world’s narrowest street. Lisa describes it as, “basically a 4′ wide sidewalk that goes through hotels, gift shops, artist studios, bars and restaurants which runs parallel to the beach for about a mile. Apparently it was constructed about 30 years ago because fisherman got tired of rolling their wheelbarrows on the sand and was originally 2′ but reconstructed as 4′ in 2001 after the original walk was destroyed by a hurricane.”
It looks like a complete street to us.
Posted June 2nd, 2011 by nate_cormier
SvR, in partnership with Friends of the Hill, Cascade Land Conservancy, and the City of Tukwila has been selected to receive the John D. Spellman Award for Achievement in Historic Preservation for its “exemplary work to preserve and interpret the Duwamish Hill Preserve.” Nate Cormier, ASLA, LEED AP, and Tom von Schrader, PE, LEED AP, will attend a ceremony on Friday, June 17th, 2011 to receive the award from County Executive Dow Constantine and the King County Landmarks Commission.
Duwamish Preserve Hill is a 9-acre nature park on an unusual outcropping of bedrock rising beside the Duwamish River. The property is culturally significant to the Muckleshoot and Duwamish tribes for its association with Southern Puget Sound Salish oral tradition and mythology. Working with the tribes, the Cascade Land Conservancy, and the City of Tukwila, SvR developed a phased master plan and detailed designs for the first phase, including trails, interpretives, viewpoints, and an outdoor classroom. Phase 1 was constructed in 2009-2010. Design of Phase 2 is underway.
Posted May 24th, 2011 by nate_cormier
WSU’s LID Research Program Director, Curtis Hinman, demonstrates the rapid infiltration capacity of the porous concrete.
SvR’s Peg Staeheli, Kathy Gwilym, and Nate Cormier attended the dedication of the Washington Stormwater Center, formerly the Washington State University-Puyallup LID Research Center, on March 20, 2011. SvR worked with leading soil, plant, and hydrology researchers to design and engineer this pioneering research facility. The Center’s “designed experiments” include:
Taken together, these LID stormwater features will allow in-depth and long-term research into the effectiveness of green stormwater infrastructure, providing relevant, high-quality data that will help improve policy and design. The event included speeches by Congressman Norm Dicks, WSU President Elson Floyd, and EPA Regional Director Dennis McLerran, among others. The event also celebrated the announcement of the Center as the Pacific Northwest location for the EPA’s Green Infrastructure Partnership, a program to disseminate leading research and technical information nationwide.
You can learn more about the Center at: http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/stormwater/
WSU’s LID Center Project Manager, Tanyalee Erwin, introduces the guest speakers. Seated from left are Josh Baldi from the Washington State Department of Ecology, WSU President Elson Floyd, EPA Regional Director Dennis McLerran, and Herman Dillon, Sr. Chairman of the Puyallup Tribe.
SvR’s Kathy Gwilym and Peg Staeheli review the porous asphalt test cells.
Monitoring stations will measure water quality of the run-off from the surface and from different depths below the porous pavements.
Monitored rain gardens compare performance of different plant palettes and maintenance regimes.
Test cells were designed to allow the cell sidewalls to act as parking stall dividers.
A gallery of soil mesocosms that compare performance of different soil mixtures.
