Sustainable Stormwater Management

Chicago + CCGTStormwater is traditionally managed by centralized governance, despite the inherently distributed nature of rainfall and the parceled management of our landscapes. As a result, our public agencies have developed regional gray infrastructure solutions.

This project, funded by the Great Lakes Protection Fund and led by Environmental Consulting & Technology, Inc., is about developing markets to encourage property owners to value and contribute to the management of stormwater. Specifically we examine whether and how organizations with stormwater management responsibility might pay for third party distributed stormwater services.

Greenleaf Advisors was asked to participate in this project given its financial market acumen combined with its deep stormwater and green infrastructure experience. Greenleaf Advisors was able to access networks within each city to identify leaders who would be likely participants in testing new markets.

Three market models for distributed stormwater solutions were developed:

    • Retrofitting stormwater management facilities (cisterns, detention ponds, etc.) with existing smart technology to control the release of water depending upon the value of the capacity at that point in time.
    • Conversion of underutilized urban brownfield sites into large-scale green infrastructure investments that provide inflow reductions.
    • Engagement of communities (e.g. residents, villages, insurance) to monetize avoided future flood costs by making landscape management choices that lowers flooding risk.

We have identified market participants for testing pilots in Chicago and Milwaukee (team members have done so in Detroit and other cities as well) Cities and industry participants are being brought together in workshops to further development the market concepts, which will be informed, in part, by the expertise Greenleaf brings relevant experience in the energy markets where distributed energy solutions connected to storage become a strategic asset for addressing wholesale power market needs. We would like to thank the Great Lakes Protection Fund for their generous support of this project.

Read the Greenleaf report here.

Work on Public-Private Partnerships Initiative in the Great Lakes to address green stormwater infrastructure

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Greenleaf Advisors has assisted Environmental Consulting and Technology (ECT) in evaluating market-based approaches to green infrastructure and to review reports including “Assessing the Market Size for Large-Scale Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes Basin.” The P3GreatLakes Initiative, led by ECT and funded by the Great Lakes Protection Fund, addresses the investment gap between federal funding for infrastructure and actual infrastructure needs in the Great Lakes basin.

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Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes Basin

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Greenleaf Advisors’ President, John Andersen, was pleased to review for publication Environmental Consulting & Technology, Inc’s latest report Assessing the Market Size for Large-Scale Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes Basin. The report, funded by the Great Lakes Protection fund, evaluates “enabling private financing or private delivery to expand the use of green infrastructure in the Great Lakes basin.”

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Greenleaf presents “Aggregation of Distributed Water Storage Solutions”

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Greenleaf presented at the workshop on “Market-based Approaches to Green Infrastructure.” The workshop was funded by the Great Lakes Protection Fund, Environmental Consulting and Technology and a team of consultants, including Greenleaf Advisors. The goal of the workshop is to develop/ascertain a strategic pathway to identify stormwater management opportunities, and to aggregate those opportunities in a manner that can allow management as a singular integrated system to capture/manage substantial water volumes.

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