Using Life Cycle Assessment to Evaluate Green and Grey Combined Sewer Overflow Control Strategies
Using Life Cycle Assessment to Evaluate Green and Grey Combined Sewer Overflow Control Strategies

Author: Maria Helena de Sousa

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Decentralized approaches to managing urban stormwater are gaining increased attention within the contexts of urban sustainability, climate change adaptation, and as a means of reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This study applied a life cycle assessment (LCA) to comparing the environmental efficiency of three means of equivalently reducing CSOs to the Bronx River (Bronx, NY, USA). Strategy 1 featured decentralized green infrastructure technologies, while “grey” strategies 2 and 3 detained, and detained and treated, respectively, excess flows at the end of pipe. We estimated greenhouse gas emissions (in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents [t CO-eq]) over the construction, operation, and maintenance phases, including energy consumed at the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), carbon sequestered, and shading provided by vegetation (in the case of the green approach) over a 50-year analysis period. The study area comprised the entire drainage area contributing to New York State permitted CSO discharge points associated with the Hunts Point WWTP. The analysis was performed using a hybrid of process and economic input-output (EIO) LCA methods. The decentralized green strategy outperformed the two grey strategies in terms of this set of environmental metrics. The net emissions of the green strategy over 50 years was 19,000 t CO-eq, whereas the grey strategies emitted 85,000 t CO-eq (detention) and 400,000 t CO-eq (detention and treatment). These results were significantly influenced by the emissions associated with the operation and maintenance activities required for strategies 2 and 3, and the carbon sequestered and shading provided by the vegetation in strategy 1, and suggest that watershed managers who seek to reduce CSOs and reduce carbon footprints would opt for the green approach.

Pragmatic Sustainability
Pragmatic Sustainability

Author: Steven A. Moore

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-04

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 1317301323

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This second edition of Pragmatic Sustainability proposes a pragmatic, discursive and pluralistic approach to thinking about sustainability.. Rather than suggesting a single solution to the problem of how to live sustainably, this collection discusses broader approaches to social and environmental change. Eight continuing authors and seven new ones adjust their dispositions toward rapidly changing and still unsustainable conditions, forging agreements and disagreements on five overlapping themes: the Grounds for Sustainability; the critique of Technological Culture; the need to conceive of Sustainability in Place; in Cities; finally asking how should we reimagine the fraught relationship between Civil Society, Industry and Regulation? Editor Steven A. Moore asks how a set of ideas now more than a century old remains relevant. A partial answer can be found in reconstructing the very modern ideas confronted by those who came to call themselves Pragmatists at the beginning of the twentieth century—evolution, ecology and design. Moore argues that we have yet to develop dispositions in theory and practice that critically integrate these ideas into sustainable development. In sum, this new edition provides a fresh and hopeful look at the wicked problems deliberated by almost anyone engaged in adapting to the always changing conditions of the built world.

Grounding Urban Natures
Grounding Urban Natures

Author: Henrik Ernstson

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0262039915

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Case studies from cities on five continents demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The global discourse around urban ecology tends to homogenize and universalize, relying on such terms as “smart cities,” “eco-cities,” and “resilience,” and proposing a “science of cities” based largely on information from the Global North. Grounding Urban Natures makes the case for the importance of place and time in understanding urban environments. Rather than imposing a unified framework on the ecology of cities, the contributors use a variety of approaches across a range of of locales and timespans to examine how urban natures are part of—and are shaped by—cities and urbanization. Grounding Urban Natures offers case studies from cities on five continents that demonstrate the advantages of thinking comparatively about urban environments. The contributors consider the diversity of urban natures, analyzing urban ecologies that range from the coastal delta of New Orleans to real estate practices of the urban poor in Lagos. They examine the effect of popular movements on the meanings of urban nature in cities including San Francisco, Delhi, and Berlin. Finally, they explore abstract urban planning models and their global mobility, examining real-world applications in such cities as Cape Town, Baltimore, and the Chinese “eco-city” Yixing. Contributors Martín Ávila, Amita Baviskar, Jia-Ching Chen, Henrik Ernstson, James Evans, Lisa M. Hoffman, Jens Lachmund, Joshua Lewis, Lindsay Sawyer, Sverker Sörlin, Anne Whiston Spirn, Lance van Sittert, Richard A. Walker

Metropolitan Sustainability
Metropolitan Sustainability

Author: F Zeman

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2012-09-11

Total Pages: 773

ISBN-13: 085709646X

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Global populations have grown rapidly in recent decades, leading to ever increasing demands for shelter, resources, energy and utilities. Coupled with the worldwide need to achieve lower impact buildings and conservation of resources, the need to achieve sustainability in urban environments has never been more acute. This book critically reviews the fundamental issues and applied science, engineering and technology that will enable all cities to achieve a greater level of metropolitan sustainability, and assist nations in meeting the needs of their growing urban populations.Part one introduces key issues related to metropolitan sustainability, including the use of both urban metabolism and benefit cost analysis. Part two focuses on urban land use and the environmental impact of the built environment. The urban heat island effect, redevelopment of brownfield sites and urban agriculture are discussed in depth, before part three goes on to explore urban air pollution and emissions control. Urban water resources, reuse and management are explored in part four, followed by a study of urban energy supply and management in part five. Solar, wind and bioenergy, the role of waste-to-energy systems in the urban infrastructure, and smart energy for cities are investigated. Finally, part six considers sustainable urban development, transport and planning.With its distinguished editor and international team of expert contributors, Metropolitan sustainability is an essential resource for low-impact building engineers, sustainability consultants and architects, town and city planners, local/municipal authorities, and national and non-governmental bodies, and provides a thorough overview for academics of all levels in this field. - Critically reviews the fundamental issues and applied science, engineering and technology that will enable all cities to achieve a greater level of metropolitan sustainability - Will assist nations in meeting the needs of their growing urban populations - Chapters discuss urban land use, the environmental impact of the build environment, the urban heat island effect, urban air pollution and emissions control, among other topics

Evaluation of Green Alternatives for Combined Sewer Overflow Mitigation
Evaluation of Green Alternatives for Combined Sewer Overflow Mitigation

Author: U S Environmental Protection Agency

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2014-08-01

Total Pages: 46

ISBN-13: 9781500647322

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The mitigation of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) is a significant environmental and financial challenge, particularly for older urban communities where these overflows are most prevalent. Communities are increasingly examining more environmentally sustainable "green" alternatives for addressing these problems. These green solutions are often endorsed because of the additional environmental, social, and economic benefits they produce. A growing body of reports and case studies - briefly reviewed here - describes and attempts to quantify these benefits as economic impacts. Most estimates of economic impacts have focused on a comparison of the costs for construction and operation of green alternatives to traditional infrastructure approaches. Some of these have attempted to estimate the economic value of communitywide environmental and aesthetic gains, and other economic benefits are occasionally identified. This report develops a broad framework, or taxonomy, for identifying and organizing the socio- economic impacts of sewer infrastructure projects. It focuses on a green project in Cincinnati, Ohio that has adopted broader economic goals. The report then uses this example to illustrate how the taxonomy can be used by community officials engaged in storm water management to obtain a fuller understanding of the economic benefits of green alternatives for CSO mitigation.