Bio-fit technologies solving water runoff gloom
By Frank Abderholden fabderholden@stmedianetwork.com July 20, 2011 10:24PM
Bull Creek Watershed Council and Upper Des Plaines River Ecosystem Partnership held a tour at the home of Jim Futransky and Amy Dickinson in unincorporated Libertyville Township on Tuesday. | Buzz Orr~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: September 19, 2011 12:27AM
LIBERTYVILLE — The philosophy of urban stormwater management has been keep the water moving downstream at all costs, but a new philosophy of runoff management is emerging.
The new bio-technology of building bio-swales, rain gardens, use of rain barrels, and permeable parking lots and green roofs has taken hold over the last decade and is now becoming common in new building and landscaping designs. Lake County, the forest preserve, Libertyville Township and the College of Lake County have used green designs in a number of new buildings and surrounding landscaping around the county.
On Wednesday, the Bull Creek Bull’s Brook Watershed Council and The Upper Des Plaines River Ecosystem Partnership hosted a tour of a project designed by landscape architect Marcus de la Fleur of Elmhurst who earned national fame with his project called 168 Elm Ave., where he and his landlord teamed up to fix a leaky basement and eventually make the property so it was pretty close to zero run-off in terms of stormwater.
In Libertyville on Ivy Lane off Rockland Road, Amy Dickinson and her husband Jim Futransky were struggling with the same problem. Futransky invited everyone into the back yard where he said with a laugh: “This was Lake Dickinson, and over there was Lower Lake Dickinson.”
They decided on pursuing a sustainable solution to the problem after listening to a talk by De la Fleur, an associate with Elmhurst-based Conservation Design Forum, at a Liberty Prairie Conservancy meeting over a year ago.
Amy has lived in the house for over 25 years and Jim joined her a little over 10 years ago. Their property was mostly lawn and dense tree cover, but a lot of maples were taken down and a lot of other trees thinned out of the back yard to let in more light and allow the use of more native plants.
De la Fleur found a lot of water came across Ivy Lane onto their property because an old storm drain was clogged going out to the Rockland Road ditch. They fixed that and then constructed a bio-cell for holding water near some Oaks, which called for careful excavation so the roots weren’t damaged. That cell then overflowed over a ribbon of rock into a long bio-swale running almost the length of the property, and then another cell at the end.
On the other side of the house, Lower Lake Dickinson was fashioned into a rain garden where downspouts feed the natural area with a third of the roof runoff. The major planting of native species has yet to take place. Oats and rye were planted so there was some ground cover.
“I was used to what I had before and what neighbors think about it,” she said, but she liked the way the wild areas meshed with the lawn. “It’s a very different look, but beautiful in it’s own way,” she said.
For Futransky, the project got him much more involved in the land, to the point he is making some raised bed gardens on the edge of the driveway. “I’ve learned much more about the property and the way water goes and about the plants on the property,” he said.
Where they used to have a wall of maple trees screening out the roadway they now have a bunch of sumac planted that will provide screening on top of the bio-swale, but it allows the native plants in the swale to soak up the sun.
De la Fleur acknowledges that it isn’t easy to wrap your head around. His philosophy is to hang onto the water on your property and let it infiltrate the ground and let it make its way naturally off the property.
“It cuts the runoff volume, keeps it on the property, then let’s it go,” he said. The goal of his swales and cells was to hold a 10-year storm event (just over 4 inches of rain in a 24 hour period) that then disappears after 48 hours. Standing water in the 72-hour range starts to invite mosquitoes, he said.
“These technologies have become more main stream over the last few years,” he said, but it is hard finding landscapers who just want to bulldoze everything and ruin it. “It’s hard to find landscape contractors to do this kind of work,” said De la Fleur, who uses Conservation Land Stewardship of Elmhurst.
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