In honour of World Water Day today, we want to share some interesting new findings and urban-dwellers’ attitudes towards storm water management, while discussing how this impacts our municipal watersheds.
The recently released Canadian Water Attitudes Study by RBC’s Blue Water Project indicates that urbanites are poorly prepared for the impact that Mother Nature may have on our cities’ water quality. This is a compelling issue, as few people understand that excess water from snow and rain may not just be a weather inconvenience, but an environmental hazard.
According to the study, “half of Canadians (47 per cent) say their ‘ideal’ house has a paved driveway or yard” but what many don’t know is that the high number of non-permeable paved surfaces in our cities can make managing excess water challenging, and contributes to pollutants in our waterways and lakes. For example, in a natural environment, like a forest, water seeps into soils and is returned to the atmosphere. But when a major rainfall occurs, run-off water from non-permeable surfaces such as roads, paved driveways and sidewalks can pick up harmful pesticides, salts, oils, bacteria and other pollutants along the way. Storm water run-off will eventually carry these pollutants through municipal sewers and into our waterways.
It’s important that Canadians understand the implications of storm water run-off and that water infrastructures in many of our cities are in dire need of repair. In RBC’s release, Bob Sandford, chair of Canadian Partnership initiative of the UN Water for Life Decade, explains that the cost of repairing drinking water, wastewater, and storm water infrastructure that is in “fair” or “very poor” condition in Canada is estimated at around a whopping $80 billion.
There are sustainable solutions using innovative recycled tire products to address these water challenges. The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority’s (TRCA) Kortright Centre for Conservation is a great example of an organization implementing sustainable technologies to manage excess storm water. We recently partnered with TRCA to resurface their old asphalt parking lot with two types of tire-derived recycled rubber pavers.
The installation used Eco-Flex® Churchill Brick Pavers and IOWAT’s AZEK VAST® permeable recycled tire paver systems, in order to test and showcase a sustainable storm water management solution, reduce the amount of runoff and improve the overall quality of its surrounding environment.
Canadians can do their part to help address some of these water challenges and improve the overall health of our environment by considering permeable products like these for projects around the home and in public spaces, from driveways and backyard patios to sidewalks and children’s playgrounds.
Find out more about permeable recycled tire products on our website. To learn more about the Kortright parking lot project, watch the installation video.
For the full Canadian Water Attitudes Study and more information about RBC Blue Water Project, visit: www.rbc.com/bluewater.
