Oros Green Street Project_Stormwater Management

Image 01 Source  Site Scene of Oros Street

Image 02  Source    Location of Oros Green Street

Case Study Background:

The Oros Green Street is the first Green Street in Los Angeles, this pilot project re-designed a residential street and park to manage storm and dry weather urban runoff in an environmentally sustainable way. This project demonstrates that best management practices (BMPs) based on biological treatment and filtration processes can be used to meet water quality objectives when distributed throughout mixed land use neighborhoods in urban settings.

Stake Holders:

The Oros Green Street Project is a public project which sponsored by government of Los Angeles. In fact, a lot of organizations and communities participated in this project. Therefore, the stakeholders are numerous.

• North East Trees Corporation
• Los Angeles Department of Public Works
• Bureau of Street Service and Sanitation
• Bureau of Engineering
• Federal City and State Government (Los Angeles, CA)
• Local Communities and Storm-Water Management Organizations

System Description and Dimensions:

The Oros Green Street Project captures storm water runoff from private homes and a residential street and cleans it through a series of soil filtration and vegetative bio-retention treatment before it gets into the Los Angeles River, while simultaneously improving and beautifying a neighborhood with new infrastructure and green space.

Image 03  Source   Rain Garden in Oros Street

Image 04 Source  Details of Infiltration Trench

Bio-retention areas built into the parkways between the street and private property line called “storm water gardens”, designed to capture the runoff from private residences. An infiltration trench at the street end, designed to capture all street and excess private property runoff.

Image 05  Source  Stormwater Planter

System Detailing and Diagrams:

Image 06  Source   Working Mechanism of natural and artificial Process

2 Stormwater flows down driveway into trench drain.
3 Stormwater is collected in trench drain and flows into stormwater garden in adjacent parkway.
4 Stormwater flows into perforated pipe in stormwater garden where it percolates downward through surrounding    gravel and soil.
5 Stormwater flowing into stormwater garden is absorbed through tree roots into tree –some is stored in tree and    some “evapo-transpires” back into the atmosphere.

A Stormwater that makes its way to the street flows down the gutter to catch basins on both sides of the street.
B Stormwater enters the catch basin where sediment, debris, grease and oil is filtered out.
C Filtered stormwater continues through pipes into the park where it enters an infiltration “gallery” consisting of         perforated pipe, sand, gravel and soil.
D Water gets further filtered as it percolates downward through the perforated pipe, gravel, sand and soil.

Necessary Policies and Resources: 

North East Trees, a non profit for LA is the main stakeholder in Oros Project. They have the following programs and initiatives developed.

Urban Forestry – develops urban forestry solutions for agencies and other organizations within a framework that maximizes the net environmental benefits of the urban forest resource.
Project Partner in Million Trees LA M l ion r es A (MTLA) Campaign through its “Creating Community One Tree at a Time”.
Initiative Contractor for Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power Trees for Green LA Trees for Green LA (TFGLA) Project.
Urban Parks Development Urban Parks Development – plans, designs and builds community, neighborhood and river adjacent parks and trails for the purpose of restoring native habitat and creating passive recreation opportunities
Watershed Rehabilitation Watershed Rehabilitation – plans, designs and implements watershed improvements with the express purpose of restoring waterways and associated habitat, improving water quality and safely increasing stormwater detention.

Possible Implication:
As described in the background, the project was a pilot project in LA. It was the first case study as well of storm water management. The project was successful as it showed results the necessary statistics.  Other streets in Art village also started implement BMP taking cue from Oros Green. eg. Elmer avenue.

Summary Statistics

Additional Photos of Oros Green Street Project

Image  07  Source   Street Scene of Oros Street

Image 09  Source   Oros Street Constructing Process

Image 10 Source  Oros Street after renovation

Benefits:

Apart from runoff reduction, Oros Green Street project also contribute a lot to city of Los Angeles.

• Underscored the neighborhood’s connection to the LA River and Steelhead Park
• Initiate new plants, like New California Sycamore plantings, meadow plantings
• Enhanced parkway redesign as well as surface water drainage system
• Minimize pollutants and Save money from waste water purification
• Modeling effect. Contribute to the development of storm-water green infrastructure

Link to the presentation below:

Oros Green Street,_by Yuxuan and Abhishek