Toronto Flooding Tests Green Design at Evergreen Brick Works
Who will you meet?
Cities are innovating, companies are pivoting, and start-ups are growing. Like you, every urban practitioner has a remarkable story of insight and challenge from the past year.
Meet these peers and discuss the future of cities in the new Meeting of the Minds Executive Cohort Program. Replace boring virtual summits with facilitated, online, small-group discussions where you can make real connections with extraordinary, like-minded people.
On Monday, July 8 around 5pm, just in time for rush hour, Mother Nature opened up her skies and hit the Greater Toronto Area with a deluge of rain. In some places, almost 130 mm of rain fell in just a matter of hours—a downpour that broke the previous record for rainfall that was set during 1954’s Hurricane Hazel.
The intensity and volume of Monday’s storm left many parts of the City without power, flooding thousands of basements, closing down TTC stations and stranding motorists and train passengers for hours—literally in their tracks.
While talking about the weather is a Canadian pastime, the increasingly erratic and severe weather is beginning to silence even the most strident climate change denier. But one thing is for sure: our aging urban infrastructure is ill-equipped to deal with our changing climate.
At Evergreen Brick Works, we are actively working to advance greener approaches to city infrastructure; promoting innovations for replacing aging and unsustainable infrastructure with new systems that will not only be more resilient in the face of extreme weather, but will also prevent the worst effects of climate change by reducing our carbon footprint. This facility is about more than demonstrating cutting-edge green design; it’s also a hub that connects theory with action, a living laboratory where leading innovators and the public can come up with solutions together.
In developing this site, we employed the highest standards of green design, but we also recognized the need to develop our own adaptive strategy to withstand severe weather events—especially flooding. Given our location in the floodplain of the Lower Don River, we knew the site would need to absorb water on a regular basis, and that we would have to devise clean, effective ways to divert excess water when flooding inevitably occurs—both rainwater runoff and messy, silty water from the Don River’s overflowing banks.
In developing these green design features, we took our cues from the natural systems and cycles that have been defining our local landscape for millennia and well before human settlement.
A birds-eye view of the flood management and water conservation features at EBW (Background Image: DTAH)
Greenways set between the site’s buildings have been planted with grasses and shrubs that slow rainwater down, trap sediment and release oxygen. Lined with a geotextile material, the greenways prevent rainwater from seeping into and contaminating ground water. They remain dry for a good portion of the year but can accommodate large and sudden storms.
The greenways clean the water and channel it into the stormwater management pond, located at the southern edge of the site, which also collects water from the parking lots and other hard surfaces on site, filtering sediment within the water before it is released back into the Don River.
The site’s eastern parking lot features pervious concrete, which contains less sand and up to 25 percent more air than normal mixtures, making it more porous for absorbing rainwater and recharging the water table. Rainwater percolates through and into the soil, where it is naturally filtered and helps replenish the groundwater supply. In heavy rains, excess runoff is channeled via the greenway and into the stormwater management pond.
We also minimize the amount of runoff from the buildings’ rooftops by collecting rainwater in fifteen 20,000-litre cisterns, situated strategically around the site, which keep water stored for other uses, such as gardening and in the site’s toilets.
For more details about flood mitigation, see the Green Design pages on our website.
In addition to the site’s physical design, Evergreen Brick Works has detailed flood management and evacuation protocols, which serve to protect all visitors, staff and volunteers whenever flooding occurs. In our latest flood, all systems worked as designed and we were able to learn much from our response plans. Although we experienced extensive flooding—in some places more than a metre of water—no serious structural damage or personal injury occurred.
We are grateful to all those who helped with the clean-up and to everyone for their patience while we dry out. Thanks to quick action, all of our programs and partner events were up again in 24 hours.
With this flood following only 45 days after our last major flood, it was a difficult pill to swallow. However, as we all grapple with how to adapt to increasing unstable weather patterns, it may be best to understand such instances as the new normal…and be ready.
Discussion
Leave your comment below, or reply to others.
Please note that this comment section is for thoughtful, on-topic discussions. Admin approval is required for all comments. Your comment may be edited if it contains grammatical errors. Low effort, self-promotional, or impolite comments will be deleted.
Read more from MeetingoftheMinds.org
Spotlighting innovations in urban sustainability and connected technology
Middle-Mile Networks: The Middleman of Internet Connectivity
The development of public, open-access middle mile infrastructure can expand internet networks closer to unserved and underserved communities while offering equal opportunity for ISPs to link cost effectively to last mile infrastructure. This strategy would connect more Americans to high-speed internet while also driving down prices by increasing competition among local ISPs.
In addition to potentially helping narrow the digital divide, middle mile infrastructure would also provide backup options for networks if one connection pathway fails, and it would help support regional economic development by connecting businesses.
Wildfire Risk Reduction: Connecting the Dots
One of the most visceral manifestations of the combined problems of urbanization and climate change are the enormous wildfires that engulf areas of the American West. Fire behavior itself is now changing. Over 120 years of well-intentioned fire suppression have created huge reserves of fuel which, when combined with warmer temperatures and drought-dried landscapes, create unstoppable fires that spread with extreme speed, jump fire-breaks, level entire towns, take lives and destroy hundreds of thousands of acres, even in landscapes that are conditioned to employ fire as part of their reproductive cycle.
ARISE-US recently held a very successful symposium, “Wildfire Risk Reduction – Connecting the Dots” for wildfire stakeholders – insurers, US Forest Service, engineers, fire awareness NGOs and others – to discuss the issues and their possible solutions. This article sets out some of the major points to emerge.
Innovating Our Way Out of Crisis
Whether deep freezes in Texas, wildfires in California, hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, or any other calamity, our innovations today will build the reliable, resilient, equitable, and prosperous grid tomorrow. Innovation, in short, combines the dream of what’s possible with the pragmatism of what’s practical. That’s the big-idea, hard-reality approach that helped transform Texas into the world’s energy powerhouse — from oil and gas to zero-emissions wind, sun, and, soon, geothermal.
It’s time to make the production and consumption of energy faster, smarter, cleaner, more resilient, and more efficient. Business leaders, political leaders, the energy sector, and savvy citizens have the power to put investment and practices in place that support a robust energy innovation ecosystem. So, saddle up.
0 Comments