{"id":2432,"date":"2012-08-23T22:08:36","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T02:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=2432"},"modified":"2012-08-23T22:08:36","modified_gmt":"2012-08-24T02:08:36","slug":"green-vs-gray-two-sides-of-the-same-coin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2012\/08\/23\/green-vs-gray-two-sides-of-the-same-coin\/","title":{"rendered":"Green vs. gray – two sides of the same coin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

DC Water's Blue Plains waste water treatment facility. CC image from erin m.<\/p><\/div>\n

While perusing Twitter (hat tip<\/a> to Jeff Wood<\/a>), I came across this Guardian article<\/a>\u00a0about urban uses of natural processes to do the dirty work of urban pollution mitigation. \u00a0The piece discusses all types of green infrastructure and the natural processes they emulate, such as bio-filtration. I’ve taken note of local examples before<\/a>, but the phrasing of their summary of the concept caught my eye:<\/p>\n

Gray infrastructure is the system of pipes and ditches that channel storm water. Green infrastructure is the harnessing of the natural processes of trees and other vegetation \u2014 so-called ecosystem services \u2014 to carry out the functions of the built systems. Green infrastructure often intercepts the water before it can run into streets and become polluted and stores the water for gradual release through percolation or evapotranspiration. Trees also clean dirty water through natural filtering functions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While drawing the contrast between green and gray infrastructures, the idea of “harnessing… natural processes” sparked a memory<\/a> of this extensive summary<\/a> from Mammoth of DC’s Blue Plains wastewater treatment facility – gray infrastructure on a massive scale. \u00a0In describing what goes on at Blue Plains, they note “the process of waste water treatment mimics \u2014 in an accelerated fashion \u2014 the natural cleaning processes of waterbodies.” The accompanying footnote:<\/p>\n

Scott Huler explains this in his fascinating On the Grid, quoting a Raleigh wastewater treatment superintendent T.J. Lynch:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we\u2019re doing is what a river would do\u2026 what happens in our plant \u00a0is the exact same thing that happens in a stream. That\u2019s exactly where the process came from. We\u2019ve just concentrated it. It might take the river a couple hundred miles to accomplish what we\u2019d do in a couple days.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Figuring out where any given piece of green infrastructure might fall in the spectrum from a naturally occurring ecology to a engineered technology is an interesting mental exercise. Rhetoric about sustainability aside, the same physical process is occurring using mostly similar mechanisms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While perusing Twitter (hat tip to Jeff Wood), I came across this Guardian article\u00a0about urban uses of natural processes to do the dirty work of urban pollution mitigation. \u00a0The piece discusses all types of green infrastructure and the natural processes they emulate, such as bio-filtration. I’ve taken note of local examples before, but the phrasing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,483,255,473],"class_list":["post-2432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-green-infrastructure","tag-infrastructure","tag-low-impact-development","tag-sustainability"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-De","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2434,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2432\/revisions\/2434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}