Onondaga County’s CSO Abatement Program - Lessons Learned and Overcoming Challenges of Large Scale Green Infrastructure Deployment

摘要

Onondaga County New York has been implementing an amended consent judgment (ACJ) forrncontrol of combined sewer overflows (CSO) to Onondaga Lake since January 1999. Throughrnthe leadership of the newly elected County Executive, Joanne M. Mahoney, the ACJ wasrnamended again in November 2009, the ACJ was amended again in November 2009 tornincorporate green infrastructure (GI) strategies to further reduce wet weather overflows and tornreplace a portion of the planned grey infrastructure. The new program, called “Save the Rain,” isrnimplementing various projects to confirm performance metrics as part of a system-wide build outrnof green infrastructure to meet the ACJ requirements. The CSO capture goals embodied in thernACJ will require green infrastructure to be significantly scaled up throughout the city to increasernCSO capture by 6% and overall system capture to 95%. Developing targeted implementationrnapproaches for green infrastructure is a primary focus of the program in order to use greenrninfrastructure to manage over 470 acres of impervious area. The program is addressing manyrnissues both technical and policy oriented in nature to develop GI implementation programs tornscale up implementation to the required levels in the ACJ.