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2009 | Buch

The Water Environment of Cities

herausgegeben von: Lawrence A. Baker

Verlag: Springer US

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

The concept for the Water Environment of Cities arose from a workshop “Green 1 Cities, Blue Waters” workshop held in 2006. The workshop assembled experts from engineering, planning, economics, law, hydrology, aquatic ecology, geom- phology, and other disciplines to present research ?ndings and identify key new ideas on the urban water environment. At a lunch discussion near the end of the workshop, several of us came to the recognition that despite having considerable expertise in a narrow discipline, none of us had a vision of the “urban water en- ronment” as a whole. We were, as in the parable, blind men at opposite ends of the elephant, knowinga great deal about the parts, but notunderstandingthe whole. We quickly recognized the need to develop a book that would integrate this knowledge to create this vision. The goal was to develop a book that could be used to teach a complete, multidisciplinary course, “The Urban Water Environment”, but could also be used as a supplemental text for courses on urban ecosystems, urban design, landscapearchitecture,water policy,waterqualitymanagement andwatershed m- agement. The book is also valuable as a reference source for water professionals stepping outside their arena of disciplinary expertise. The Water Environment of Cities is the ?rst book to use a holistic, interdis- plinary approach to examine the urban water environment. We have attempted to portrayaholisticvisionbuiltaround theconcept of water as a coreelement ofcities. Water has multipleroles:municipalwatersupply,aquatichabitat,landscapeaesth- ics, and recreation. Increasingly, urban water is reused, serving multiple purposes.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction

Few of us, even among professionals who think about specific aspects of water every day, have ever thought about the “water environment of cities”. What does this mean, and why is it important? Some aspects may be familiar, whereas others are out of sight, and others are conceptual constructs. Parts of the urban water environment are obvious. Water features are often the heart and soul of many cities. Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline, the Chain of Lakes park system and the Mississippi riverfront in Minneapolis (Fig. 1.1), and Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” define these cities and make them uniquely livable. These water features renew the soul.

Lawrence A. Baker

Chapter 2. The Urban Water Budget

In this chapter our goal is to highlight some of the many ways that urbanization affects the water budget and water cycle. A water budget describes the stores or volumes of water in the surface, subsurface and atmospheric compartments of the environment over a chosen increment of time. The water cycle has to do with characterizing the flow paths and flow rates of water from one store to another. Understanding how urbanization affects the water budget and water cycle first requires an appreciation of how conditions work in a natural system.

Claire Welty

Chapter 3. Groundwater in the Urban Environment

Groundwater is a critical resource for many of the world’s cities. While a few cities (for example, New York) rely upon protected surface-water reservoirs for their supply, many more depend on groundwater. Conservation, protection, and management of groundwater are thus necessities for most cities. This chapter reviews the basics of groundwater hydrology, supply, and water quality, and then goes on to examine groundwater in the specific context of the urban environment.

Peter Shanahan

Chapter 4. Urban Infrastructure and Use of Mass Balance Models for Water and Salt

Urban infrastructure supplies water to urban areas and drains away sewage and stormwater. These services are critical to the health and prosperity of modern cities. The built infrastructure includes reservoirs, concrete channels, canals, pipes, pumps, and treatment facilities. This infrastructure is usually owned by public entities (cities or water and sewer agencies). Some smaller sized systems are operated by private companies who can adequately train personnel and achieve economies of scale through operating facilities for several localized treatment and distribution systems. Privatization for operations of large-sized water and wastewater systems (i.e., serving >100,000 people) is slowly expanding in the USA, although the cities still own the infrastructure. Public entities bill private residences, commercial and industrial users, etc. to repay the enormous capital investment of this infrastructure, reoccurring replacement and repair and continuous operating expenses.

Paul Westerhoff, John Crittenden

Chapter 5. New Concepts for Managing Urban Pollution

Most current pollution management in cities is based on treating pollution at the end-of-the pipe, after pollution is generated. This paradigm worked well for treating municipal sewage and industrial effluents – point sources of pollutants. Pollution from these sources has been greatly reduced since passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. However, the remaining pollution problem in post-industrial cities is mostly caused by nonpoint sources – runoff from lawns, erosion from construction sites, gradual decomposition of automobiles (e.g., erosion of tire particles containing zinc and brake pad linings with copper), and added road salt from de-icing operations. The next section of this chapter shows why the end-of-pipe paradigm cannot be the primary approach for dealing with these types of pollution and why new approaches are needed.

Lawrence A. Baker

Chapter 6. Streams and Urbanization

“Urbanization” encompasses a diverse array of watershed alterations that influence the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of streams. In this chapter, we summarize lessons learned from the last half century of research on urban streams and provide a critique of various mitigation strategies, including recent approaches that explicitly address geomorphic processes. We focus first on the abiotic conditions (primarily hydrologic and geomorphic) and their changes in streams that accompany urbanization, recognizing that these changes may vary with geomorphic context and climatic region. We then discuss technical approaches and limitations to (1) mitigating water-quantity and water-quality degradation through site design, riparian protection, and structural stormwater-management strategies; and (2) restoring urban streams in those watersheds where the economic, social, and political contexts can support such activities.

Derek B. Booth, Brian P. Bledsoe

Chapter 7. Urban Water Recreation: Experiences, Place Meanings, and Future Issues

City sights … city smells … city sounds. In stark contrast to most urban images, water resources afford aesthetic relief among a variety of other individual and community benefits, including recreation. Water-based recreation experiences in urban environments contribute to citizen’s quality of life through opportunities for enhanced health and wellness, environmental protection, and stimulated economic development. Beyond the benefits afforded through recreation experiences, however, are the meanings urban dwellers and visitors attach to these recreation resources. Both the recreation experiences and the meanings attached to these recreation environments have short- and long-term implications for water resource managers, policy makers, and urban planners. These urban water-based recreation experiences and resources, their place meanings, and future issues associated with them are the subject of this chapter.

Ingrid E. Schneider

Chapter 8. Urban Design and Urban Water Ecosystems

This chapter addresses the role of urban design in the performance of urban water ecosystems, with an emphasis on urban rainwater runoff and future urban infrastructure systems. The main thesis is that new designs must be supported by an integrative framework for analysis and application in order to significantly change overall urban hydrologic performance. Designers, planners, and scientists do not currently share such a framework. A straightforward landscape-based heuristic is proposed here which uses simple categories of hydrological function to sort, map, and propose changes to diverse urban land uses within an urban drainage basin.

Kristina Hill

Chapter 9. Legal Framework for the Urban Water Environment

The complexity of the legal framework for the urban water environment approaches the complexity of the scientific and technical aspects of urban water management addressed in other chapters, although for different reasons and with different possible solutions. Urban water resources are addressed, to varying and sometimes overlapping degrees, by private, local, state, regional, federal, and sometimes even international law. Some aspects of urban water resources management are governed by common law (legal principles derived from a series of decisions reached by judges in individual cases), while other requirements are dictated by statutes passed by federal, state, or local legislative bodies, or regulations issued by administrative agencies. Separate (although sometimes linked) legal regimes address aspects of water supply, water treatment and distribution, and the environmental and human health and safety aspects of wastewater, storm water, and drainage or flood control.

Robert W. Adler

Chapter 10. Institutions Affecting the Urban Water Environment

The complexity of the legal framework discussed in Chapter 9 is mirrored by an equally intricate mosaic of legal and political institutions that govern, manage, and otherwise affect the urban water environment. Those include legislative bodies that pass the statutes, ordinances, and other enactments that affect urban water use and management; courts that interpret and enforce those legal rules and obligations; administrative agencies that implement and often further interpret applicable legislation; and governmental, quasi-governmental, and private entities that provide water and related services to end users of water and other beneficiaries of aquatic resources. As is true for the relevant sources of law, institutions affecting urban water resources operate at the local, state, regional, federal, and sometimes international levels. Water institutions can also consist of collaborative mixtures of organizations of various kinds and at various levels of government, working together to address problems of mutual interest, as well as a wide range of private entities not specifically discussed in this chapter.

Robert W. Adler

Chapter 11. Institutional Structures for Water Management in the Eastern United States

Cities are faced with numerous and difficult tasks related to the management, treatment and disposal of water. Institutional structures (agencies, organizations, utilities, and departments) are needed to address these water issues. The choice of institutional arrangement is varied across the country and affected by local factors such as politics, history, geography, resources, water management issues and individuals involved in water issues.

Cliff Aichinger

Chapter 12. Adaptive Water Quantity Management: Designing for Sustainability and Resiliency in Water Scarce Regions

Water quantity management in the southwestern (SW) United States is becoming increasingly complex, challenging and controversial. Key factors driving this include: Rapid population growth within multi-jurisdiction metropolitan areas, drought and an increasing awareness of climatic variability and global climate change, needs to reallocate existing supplies as well as to make water available for environmental purposes, and the magnitude of the costs and benefits at stake.

Jim Holway

Chapter 13. Demand Management, Privatization, Water Markets, and Efficient Water Allocation in Our Cities

When water is plentiful, we tend to take it for granted and overuse it. Once water becomes scarce, our neglect changes to pleas for new supplies. In other words, when water demands exceed the supply at existing low prices, shortages emerge and we appeal for an increase in supply. Yet expanding domestic water supplies has become much more difficult and expensive. This is because we have already developed the low cost sources of supply and face growing environmental constraints due, in part, to our increased awareness of the many instream services undeveloped water resources provide. The cost of developing new sources includes both the explicit financial cost of infrastructure and the opportunity cost of using water consumptively, rather than for instream or nonconsumptive services. Although nonconsumptive uses, by definition, do not involve water consumption, they can change the timing and location of water flows (hydropower), increase water temperature (cooling), or pollute (boating) the water. In addition, these instream (or nonconsumptive services) such as sewage dilution, recreation, and a healthy aquatic habitat may require increased water supplies. Balancing all these demands is a challenge and requires us to recognize that our supplies of clean, fresh water resources are quite limited. Simply increasing the supply is no longer the easy option. We must now emphasize using the water we have more wisely.

K. William Easter

Chapter 14. Principles for Managing the Urban Water Environment in the 21st Century

One of the key ideas of this book is the holism of the urban water environment and its importance to human well-being. As we have seen in Chapter 2, the urban water environment interconnects the built environment—the water delivery and sewage infrastructure and the impervious surfaces that alter hydrology—with the natural environment, comprising surface streams, rivers and lakes, and underground aquifers. Though conceptually simple and logical, these components are rarely considered a whole system.

Lawrence A. Baker, Peter Shanahan, Jim Holway

Backmatter

Titel: The Water Environment of Cities
herausgegeben von: Lawrence A. Baker
Verlag: Springer US
Electronic ISBN: 978-0-387-84891-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-84890-7
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-84891-4