MMSD to award $1.5 million in grants for green infrastructure
Rain collection projects funded
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District plans to award $1.5 million in grants to 13 community groups, businesses and municipalities to help pay for rain collection projects as part of its 2017 green infrastructure partnership program, district officials said Monday.
Among the projects: rooftop water collection and storage systems at the historic Pabst Brewery complex on N. 8th St.; porous pavement connected to a cistern, and expansion of a rain garden at MillerCoors brewery; and artificial wetlands and native plant landscaping at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center on the Lake Michigan shoreline.
To celebrate the growing use of green infrastructure to keep storm water out of sewers and prevent overflows or backups into basements, MMSD on Monday awarded Alice’s Garden Urban Farm with its monthly “Green Luminary” award. Investing in green infrastructure to collect, filter and store storm water is less costly than building more sewers or deep tunnel storage, officials said.
The 2-acre Alice’s Garden on the north end of Johnsons Park at W. Garfield St. encompasses 120 garden plots that absorb rain where it falls and prevent the water from reaching nearby combined sanitary and storm sewers.
In the next year, Alice’s Garden will build a swale to drain water from the nearby Brown Street Academy into an underground cistern, said Venice Williams, executive director of the community gardens. The water can be used for the gardens.
Other recent recipients of the Green Luminary award have included the Milwaukee Public Museum and Cream City Farms, in the 2200 block of N. 30th St. in Milwaukee.
MMSD received 20 partnership grant applications for 2017, said Karen Sands, MMSD director of planning, research and sustainability.
The grants pay part of the costs of the projects. A green roof planted with flowers, herbs or ground cover to absorb water generally costs an average of $22 per square foot, Sands said. MMSD reimburses the property owner $5 per square foot for a green roof.
Milwaukee County War Memorial Inc. will receive a grant of $366,966 this year to help pay costs of native plant landscaping, porous pavement and drainage swales to capture storm water before it enters Lake Michigan, according to Sands. The project will collect an estimated 152,600 gallons of water in each rainstorm.
The War Memorial project is one phase of a larger “Greenprint for Milwaukee Shoreline” renovation plan that extends 2.8 miles from Michigan St. north through Veterans Park and McKinley Marina.
Schlitz Audubon will be reimbursed $189,280 for one phase of a project that includes creating new wetlands, restoring existing wetlands and native plant landscaping to capture and filter storm water at its lakefront wildlife sanctuary.
When the plan is completed, officials expect the wetlands, trees and other plants will capture 2.9 million gallons of rain in each storm.
WasserGärten at The 42, a development at the former Pabst distribution center building on N. 8th St., will receive a grant of $166,436.