Volunteers have helped Depave over 17,000 sq.ft. of pavement in the last three years and through a
new grant, the District plans to triple that total over the next two years with three new projects. (Photo courtesy of Sara Best)
Our efforts to remove excess pavement
and replace it with green space
to benefit communities and reduce
pollution from stormwater runoff just
got a big boost! After more than two
years of work with the
Puget Sound Partnership and other regional partners,
the District is excited to announce
the award of a
National Estuary Program
grant to help spread the Depave
program throughout the Puget Sound.
This two-year grant will fund three
different Depave projects that will
each serve as a case study for a “How-To” guidebook and video series we’ll
produce and share with local government
partners throughout our region.
Our hope is that these resources will
make it easy for other conservation
districts, non-profits, cities, and counties to adopt their own Depave
programs and dramatically increase
the impact of this great program.
Dozens of volunteers helped Depave 7,000sq.ft.
of pavement along McKinley Ave in Tacoma
and plant it with 2,800 shrubs and 30 trees.
Since 2014 the District has completed
five Depave projects, which
have removed a total of 17,760 sq.ft.
of pavement and replaced it with 55
urban trees and hundreds of shrubs.
As a result, over 450,000 gallons of
polluted stormwater runoff is filtered
back into the ground annually. By
comparison, the first project we will be
implementing with these grant funds at
the
Holy Rosary Church in Tacoma will
remove over 17,000 sq.ft. of pavement!
Now imagine if a few years from now
100 Depave projects happen each
year in communities throughout the
Puget Sound…hundreds of thousands
of square feet of pavement replaced
with trees and green space and millions
of gallons of polluted stormwater
kept out of Puget Sound…each year.That’s a vision we think is worth
working towards and we look forward
to your help making it happen.
In order to help spread the program,
we’re planning an out of jurisdiction
project at
Fairview Christian School & Child Center in Seattle in partnership
with Sustainable Seattle. The
Holy Rosary Church Depave is planned for August with more details still to
come.
For our third project, we’re
hoping to find a partner to do a
parking lot retrofit to replace the
regular pavement with permeable
pavement, so i
f you have suggestions
on potential locations or partners,
submit your ideas to Melissa Buckingham,
MelissaB@piercecd.org.
We would like to thank the Environmental Protection Agency, which administers
the National Estuary Program(NEP) to protect and restore water
quality; the Puget Sound Partnership
for facilitating the local NEP process;
the WA Department of Ecology; and
all of our many local partners that
have made this project possible.