One of the best ways to reduce stormwater and its harmful impacts on water quality and ecosystem health is to implement practices known collectively as green infrastructure techniques. Green infrastructure mimics and works with nature to reduce stormwater runoff onsite using green space, native landscaping, and other techniques to encourage water to infiltrate into the ground.

Since stormwater carries most pollutants to waterbodies, green infrastructure can significantly reduce the amount of pollution entering a waterbody because it reduces or eliminates runoff from a site. Additionally, green infrastructure can help reduce flooding, channel erosion, and scouring downstream. At the city or county scale, GI can be a patchwork of natural areas that provides habitat, flood protection, cleaner air, and cleaner water. At the neighborhood or site scale, stormwater management systems that mimic nature soak up and store water.

Green infrastructure is applicable to new and existing developments and can be integrated into virtually any site, from the residential scale to larger sites such as commercial areas. The range of techniques continues to expand and new advances in design provide greater water quality benefits. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, along with improving water quality, green infrastructure practices also save substantial money for property owners, communities, and developers by decreasing the amount

of expensive below ground drainage infrastructure required and reducing or eliminating the need for other stormwater-related facilities such as curbs, erosion control measures, catch basins, and outlet control structures.

In addition to water quality benefits, green infrastructure also provides ecosystem services and associated economic benefits that conventional stormwater controls (e.g., detention basins) do not. Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits that we gain from the natural environment and properly functioning ecosystems.

Examples of ecological services include purification of air and water, maintenance of biodiversity, decomposition of wastes, soil and vegetation generation and renewal, pollination of crops and natural vegetation, groundwater recharge through wetlands, seed dispersal, greenhouse gas mitigation, and aesthetically pleasing landscapes.

Green infrastructure also stresses the use of native plants, which typically have much deeper root systems than turf grass. This dramatically increases infiltration at a site, as well as uptake of nutrients

Examples of green infrastructure practices include rain gardens, rain barrels, pervious pavement, downspout planter boxes, green roofs, and storm tree boxes. The Watershed Center has installed numerous green infrastructure techniques throughout the Grand Traverse Bay watershed.