For a state that has long been plagued with an incurable drought, California has faced its wettest seasons known to date in the past few years. The substantial amounts of rainwater can be credited to the El Niño weather event and climate change. El Niños typically cause warmer temperatures and increased precipitation, and climate change is making this event stronger than ever. The wet years are becoming wetter and the dry years are becoming dryer. According to CBS News, much of the precipitation has been concentrated in Northern California, meaning that UC Berkeley, along with the rest of the Bay Area, is in a unique position to deal with increased rainwater by adapting its infrastructure.

UC Berkeley is currently using a variety of sustainable stormwater management tactics. In fact, they are so naturally incorporated into our campus infrastructure that you wouldn’t think twice about it. A simple patch of vegetation or Strawberry Creek is instrumental to campus rainwater management. Other tactics include bioswales, permeable surfaces, green roofs, and rain gardens.

A report on UC Berkeley’s sustainable water infrastructure explained that bioswales, also known as vegetation channels, are great replacements for grass patches that can be found around campus. Bioswales are flush with the surrounding pavement and have vegetation that can capture rainwater and use it as natural irrigation. Overflow drains can also be found at the deepest point of bioswales, which is where excess water can flow in the case of a major rainstorm. One location on campus where a bioswale is located is in Lower Sproul Plaza. By replacing grass patches with bioswales, UC Berkeley has been able to incorporate natural displays that serve as sustainable rainwater infrastructure.

Permeable surfaces that efficiently soak up rainwater include porous pavers, woodchips, decomposed granite, or vegetation. These surfaces are efficient in repaving grounds by allowing water to seep through instead of running off. Porous pavers can be seen in the Wellman Hall parking lot. UC Berkeley could, however, take further initiative by choosing to repave other central walkways around campus such as the cement around the glade.

The report on UC Berkeley’s sustainable water infrastructure explains that green roofs, such as the one on top of Bechtel Hall, “improve water quality by catching and absorbing airborne pollutants that would otherwise inevitably wash into the creek. They also deter flooding by absorbing rainwater instead of funneling it into gutters and storm drains.” With the UC Berkeley campus and San Francisco containing numerous  towering buildings, this is a strategy that could be utilized more without having to dedicate any new space to it.

Finally, rain gardens, the last of the main green infrastructures found on campus, are often confused with bioswales because they are very similar except rain gardens are larger and do not have overflow drains at the bottom. Rain gardens surround the Blum Center and are completely irrigated by the water that runs off the roof.

With the increased rainfall that the Bay Area is facing, Berkeley needs to ramp up its green stormwater infrastructure. However, it can be expensive, and currently, not all stormwater can be managed with green infrastructure alone, which is where the metal drains and underground pipes come in.

Vicente Tinoco, a Berkeley PhD candidate and instructor of Urban and Regional Development, said that the goal of metal drains that filter into underground pipes is to drain water as fast as possible. While this may seem effective, it actually can be quite detrimental to the ecosystem. In Berkeley, when metal drains filter rainwater into underground pipes, the water is then redirected and released into either Strawberry Creek or the bay. “The water that they [the metal drains and pipes] are carrying towards the creek has a high velocity so at the point they reach the creek it creates some incision or erosion in the bed of the creek,” Tinoco said. Erosion increases pollution and sedimentation in a creek which causes a decline in aquatic biology and degraded ecosystems. Also, the rapid funneling of excess amounts of water doesn’t allow for the water table to recharge, which runs the risk of flooding. Strawberry Creek is a vital component of Berkeley. It is the campus watershed and acts as a natural rainwater management system, catching water in its creek bed and vegetation along its bank. As stated in the UC Berkeley sustainable water management report, the health of Strawberry Creek serves as a litmus test for how well the university is creating and managing sustainable systems for water management. Therefore, it is crucial to increase green infrastructure to supplement metal drains. When they are used together in the right proportion, a balance of infiltration and drainage management is created with minimal to no harm to the natural environment.

UC Berkeley is fortunate to have a robust sustainable stormwater infrastructure system. “The San Francisco Bay Area is likely one of the leading places in the contribution worldwide about this thinking of managing stormwater with green infrastructure,” Tinoco said. However, considering the historical drought that struck California from 2012-2016 and the increased levels of rainfall, there is more the Bay can do to effectively capture the water.

A Cal Matters article said that California fails to capture massive amounts of excess stormwater that could help supply water for millions of people a year. This indicates that California is still far from harnessing its increased rainfall. UC Berkeley and California can continue working to replace grassy areas with bioswales or rain gardens, cement pavements with permeable surfaces, and tops of commercial buildings with green roofs; as well as take extra precautions to assure that natural waterways are protected. While these are all small changes alone, the combination of these methods and common use will make for a robust stormwater management system.

We have the opportunity, knowledge, and technology to improve our stormwater management and maximize water usage. According to Tinoco, this can be unlocked by furthering our knowledge on the complex relationship between the needs of society and the needs of the environment. “In the deeper essence of sustainability, understanding these systems may mean understanding what is needed to sustain different aspects of life and the built environment,” he said.