Suburban Street Stormwater Retrofitting

The purpose of this guidebook is to provide an overview of design and implementation strategies for stormwater retrofitting within suburban street rights-of-way. Street stormwater retrofitting is a Green Street design approach that embraces low impact development (LID) principles to treat stormwater runoff within the paved areas of existing roadways. In essence, Green Streets function as machines that mitigate the potentially harmful effects to water and air quality that streets can present. Depending upon their extent within the built environment, Green Streets can perform these functions across a variety of scales and have the potential to greatly affect positive environmental change when implemented across large areas. In addition to promoting responsible and healthy stormwater management practices, these green infrastructure amenities offer communities a wide array of benefits including neighborhood beautification, vehicular traffic calming, and pedestrian and bicycle safety.