A narrow time window of opportunity has been created by the award of non-NSF ARRA funds to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) to install a network of new "Green Streets" across the City on a very aggressive time scale. DPR uses the term "Green Streets" (GS) to denote specially engineered vegetated traffic islands, medians, and bump-outs constructed on underutilized impervious surfaces within the public right-of-way. The ARRA funds can not be used to acquire and install instrumentation for GS performance measurements, and installation of such instrumentation post GS construction is problematic. What is needed is installation during construction. The instrumentation will enable the acquisition of data on stormwater volume capture rates, pollution partitioning, and evaportranspiration under variable environmental and stormwater loading conditions in real urban settings. The purposes of the RAPID grant are to fund (1) fast-track installation during construction of instrumentation for GS performance measurement, and (2) research involving students using the installed instrumentation to obtain the targeted data to test specific hypotheses on GS performance. Among the hypotheses to be tested is that by utilizing runoff harvesting in conjunction with GS, evapotranspiration rates can be increased in comparison to un-irrigated baselines, thus maximizing beneficial use of otherwise undesirable stormwater runoff. These data will be important because they will help water utilities around the nation assess the extent to which new GS infrastructure will be more cost-effective and sustainable than traditional means of stormwater management. Upcoming "billion dollar" urban infrastructure decisions will be impacting the urban water environment for decades.
