Essay On Green Roof System

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Recommended: environmental benefits of green roofs

Seeing environmental sustainability is a defining issue of the 21st century, Penn is dedicated to promoting a sustainable culture and implementing environment conscious policies. Penn believes that higher education can play a leadership role in addressing global climate change, through its research, teaching and operational practices. The use of green roof technologies is one of a number of these sustainable development strategies. Green roofs are an attractive sustainable technology, especially in densely developed urban area like Penn. One of the most significant environmental challenges facing Philadelphia is pollution of its rivers. Like many of America's older cities, Philadelphia has a combined sewer/stormwater system, in which underground sewer pipes also carry away excess stormwater after a rainfall. During significant rain events, excess stormwater from city roofs, roads and parking lots can overwhelm the sewage treatment plants, resulting in untreated sewage being washed directly into the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. Since a good portion of the city is comprised of rooftops, one of the key strategies to reducing stormwater runoff is using green roofs to slow the passage of rainwater into the sewer system. Yet, uncertainty remains regarding their benefit in reducing an attenuating roof water runoff. To help the university learn more about the stormwater benefits of green roofs, this report provides monitoring guidelines and information to support a uniform monitoring approach for green roofs on campus, with one site-specific case study. With uniform monitoring approaches, the effects of green roofs on stormwater runoff hydrology can be compared more accurately from site to site. These comparisons can then support ... ... middle of paper ... ... amount of runoff water picks up different types of wastes, either natural or human-made, and rushes them into different reservoirs, namely lakes, rivers, and sources of drinking water. Amazingly, green roofs can absorb between 50 and 100% of the precipitation that falls on the roof, greatly increase the filtering time for rainwater, and largely reduce the volume of storm water flowing into streams and drainage systems. 2.3 USE OF GREEN ROOFS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA With the ambitious goal to be the greenest city, City of Philadelphia ranked No.4 in green roof growth in 2012 and 2011, according to the annual reports of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (GRHC). In cooperation with the Philadelphia Water Department Office of Watersheds, Penn is exhibiting best practices in sustainability by installing green roofs on a number of buildings through out the campus:

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