Wet regions and drought-stricken areas alike can benefit from a “spongier” approach to physical infrastructure. As the atmosphere warms, it holds more water, which can then result in flashier and quicker rain events. The challenge with these sudden rain bursts is that outdated municipal water infrastructure is easily overwhelmed. This leads to extreme flooding and polluted waterways. 

Undoubtedly, there have been unintended consequences to urbanization. The amount of impervious surfaces - in the form of streets, sidewalks, alleyways, and rooftops - is one of them. Land that once absorbed rainfall, returning it to the natural water cycle, is now caked over with pavement. Rainfall now hits those surfaces and runs off to gutters and storm drains, picking up every pollutant and toxin in its path. This polluted runoff is expensive to treat at wastewater plants and every drop of water that doesn’t naturally re-enter the water cycle creates another unintended consequence that is even more dire - aquifer depletion. 

At AquiPor, we’ve always thought of stormwater as an asset rather than a liability of waste. Large, quick rainfall can become very valuable for cities if they design their physical infrastructure in ways that can utilize it. There’s no better way to do that than getting it back into the ground naturally through porous concrete and other green infrastructure approaches.