Response to development must include sustainability

I see the challenges of growth and its impact on the environment from a vantage point in west Fayetteville. So I appreciate your editorial about stormwater runoff and water pollution in this era of urban development.

The catastrophic year we have just lived through, with its floods, droughts, landslides, forest fires and oil spills, should alert us to the consequences of ignoring our relationship with the environment. It might well be too late to repair this relationship, but the Illinois River Watershed Partnership and other similar groups have studied the issue and offer knowledge-based practices to improve and protect our water supply at every level. The partnership’s website offers some practical information about their work, including the concept of Blue Cities and Blue Neighborhoods, approaching the problem at the local level.

Blue initiative programs are focused on sustainable stormwater management. These programs complement our notion of a green environment, emphasizing low-impact practices at the neighborhood level. Water resource management, like management of the land, is much more cost-effective than reactive management, which is so often “too little, too late” to change things.

The Blue Neighborhoods program will identify the key challenges on a neighborhood scale and then promote low-impact practices that best solve the problem(s). The result will be more green spaces in neighborhoods, less flooding and an open channel to address runoff issues.

The Blue Cities program will tailor education to help elected officials and staff to understand how humans impact the land, how the land impacts the water and what are the recommended best practices to neutralize the addition of impervious surfaces as we develop our region.

Readers can access the website of the Illinois River Watershed Alliance for information about these programs. We can also inform our elected officials and other influencers of urban development that this issue is of primary importance to the future of our region.

ETHEL SIMPSON

Fayetteville