From Feb. 4 to 7, an atmospheric river passing through the skies of California unleashed 9 inches of rain on Los Angeles.
Fortunately, the city has spent years preparing for this type of deluge by mimicking one of the simplest organisms in the animal kingdom: a sponge. By installing a mosaic of green spaces and shallow basins with porous soil known as “spreading grounds,” the city was able to soak up 8.6 billion gallons of water during the storm, which is enough to support over 100,000 households for a year, Wired reported last week.
Sponge cities: Impermeable concrete sidewalks or paved areas often exacerbate storm-related flooding because they are unable to absorb water and the liquid instead flows into drains, overwhelming infrastructure and leading to overflows.
“The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told Wired. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does.”
Natural materials such as dirt and plants, on the other hand, welcome the water from storms or dams, and can filter it into underground aquifers that cities can tap into for freshwater supplies, especially during droughts. An added bonus? Green spaces have a slew of health benefits for city dwellers—from reducing heat stress to boosting mental health.
The “sponge-city” movement is gaining traction in other areas around the country and world. Philadelphia is in the midst of a 25-year project to revamp its water systems, dedicating an estimated $2.4 billion in public funds to develop green spaces to absorb stormwater runoff, sometimes simply in the form of planters on the sidewalk. In China, the national government has spent over a decade adding spongy elements to dozens of cities around the country.
“You are actually playing tai chi with nature, not boxing with nature,” Yu Kongjian, a landscape architect who has helped spread this type of design in China, told NPR.
Green and gray: This technique is part of a broader push to weave modern engineering techniques with natural systems, known as “green-gray infrastructure.” It turns out nature knows what it’s doing when it comes to flood control: In the U.S., coral reefs save $1.8 billion in damages from flooding every year, research shows, while mangrove forests can prevent erosion in coastal areas and protect communities from storm surges.
There are other applications worth keeping an eye on in the “green-gray” space beyond flooding, particularly in pollution control. If you’re interested, check out how seagrasses in Australia are holding back “truckloads of heavy metals” from being released into the ocean from a nearby ore smelter in a recent piece by Clare Watson for Hakai Magazine.
More Top Climate News
In last week’s newsletter, I covered the impact that climate change is having on local restaurants due to massive supply chain disruptions.
But this week, the people who put the “farm” in farm-to-table are taking center stage in the news cycle.
Food fight: In France, a crowd of farmers stormed a Paris agricultural fair to voice their frustrations surrounding rules to allow cheap food imports into Europe from other countries and proposed European Union climate regulations on agriculture—both of which they believe could threaten their livelihoods, the New York Times reported.
This is just the latest in a string of agricultural protests across France and the rest of Europe; farmers have dumped manure on the streets of Belgium and driven tractors through Madrid. “There is a clear backlash on the agriculture part of the Green Deal,” French EU lawmaker Pascal Canfin told Reuters, referring to the set of reforms proposed by the EU to reach net zero by 2050.
Among these were measures to reduce the climate footprint of the agricultural industry, including a bill to halve the use of chemical pesticides by 2030. However, following farmer backlash, EU president Ursula von der Leyen withdrew this ruling earlier in February. Some believe this decision could hamper Europe’s entire green transition, while others argue that more relaxed rules and financial incentives are necessary to support more climate-friendly agriculture without hurting farmers’ incomes, according to previous New York Times coverage.
Similar clashes between farmers and politicians pushing for climate-related agricultural reforms have occurred in other countries around the world, including the United States. In 2020, many farmers pledged their support for former President Donald Trump after he rolled back several agriculture-related environmental regulations, as my colleague Georgina Gustin reported at the time.
Meanwhile, parents across the U.S. are pushing for electric school buses to minimize the negative health effects of diesel exhaust in children, the Associated Press reported. In the piece, University of Michigan public health researcher Sara Adar points out that children are more susceptible to air pollution than adults because they breathe in more air per body size. This story is particularly timely following the release of a report last week from the American Lung Association, which found that if the U.S. sells exclusively zero-tailpipe emission electric vehicles by 2035, there would be 2.7 million fewer asthma attacks in children and 147,000 less cases of bronchitis.
In the wildlife world, New Yorkers lamented the loss of Flaco, a Eurasian eagle-owl that had been living free in the urban jungle for more than a year after escaping the Central Park Zoo. A necropsy revealed that Flaco died from an acute traumatic injury likely caused by crashing into a window, the same fate suffered each year by up to one billion birds in the U.S. Following the owl’s death, State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and other New York legislators announced a renewed push to pass the Bird Safe Buildings Act—which they’ve renamed the FLACO (Feathered Lives Also Count) Act—that “will require any new or significantly altered state buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs, particularly in their windows,” according to a statement.
And finally, an update on the saga I covered two weeks ago about a dead endangered female North Atlantic right whale that washed ashore on Martha’s Vineyard with lobster fishing gear around its tail. A recent analysis by the Provincetown Independent found many individuals are proposing online that the whale died due to construction of an offshore wind farm near the island known as Vineyard Wind, “in spite of the fact that the necropsy report presents no evidence that wind turbine construction directly or indirectly influenced it,” wrote William von Herff for the Independent.
A chunk of these comments also alleged that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or other authorities covered up the wind farm’s supposed impact on the whale, with some even claiming that federal officials put the ropes on the whale after it washed ashore. Conservative politicians and fossil fuel lobbyist groups have often used whale advocacy to halt offshore wind project development despite a lack of credible evidence establishing this link.
Kiley Price
Fellow
Kiley Price is a science journalist who focuses on biodiversity, fisheries, ocean health and climate change. She earned her master’s degree at New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Previously, Kiley earned her bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in journalism at Wake Forest University, where she spent a month in Thailand reporting on the intersection of Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement as a Pulitzer Fellow. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Mongabay, Yale Environment 360 and more.
