Intro
Greetings respected colleagues: I have started a blog to explore various stormwater and watershed topics. Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts and if you have ideas or topics that you’d like to explore together.
Bioretention Engineered Soil Media – Frankenstein & Sustainability
Victor Frankenstein would feel right at home as a stormwater engineer. His success at cobbling together random body parts to create a living man/monster would put him in good stead to build a bioretention cell – with gravel, underdrain pipes and clean-outs, mulch, and plants all assembled from various origins to create a living stormwater practice. If this stormwater creature had a brain, it would certainly be the engineered soil media, as the media is responsible for processing pollutants, draining properly, and growing the plants.
If this is the creature that is lurking in our landscapes, is it a sustainable one? Put another way, why are we importing large volumes of an engineered soil media into our practices at great cost and use of fossil fuels, and are there alternatives to this approach?