I challenge every business owner to really consider the benefits of stormwater green infrastructure.  You can be like those who argue that they could never afford to implement the new stormwater regulations and that it will be bad for business, or you could really learn about green infrastructure and find out how GREAT it can be for business!

Bill Raines is gaining lots of kudos for being the first to embrace retrofitting his site to incorporate green infrastructure for stormwater treatment.  Although he embraces it fully at this point, it took many years of conversations, calculations, and investigations.  Many times over the past five years, Mr Raines has thrown up his hands and said it just wasn’t going to work.  Most of the engineers we worked with said the same thing.  It took Josh Rogers and Adam Reynolds from the City and County water quality departments to really bring things around to feasible.  His tax reductions have been great motivators for implementing this wetland.  He had extra incentives, including creating a learning lab for students at Skyuka Hall, which is located at his Four Squares site. If SEA hadn’t been there the entire time, bringing new ideas, explaining how things worked, helping with the calculations….it wouldn’t have ever happened.  We were there thanks to the 319 grant funded through the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.  Our idea in 2009, when the uproar over huge increases in stormwater fees was at its peak, has resulted in lots of education not just for the kids, but for  Mr Raines and me, many engineers, and many developers.  Everyone should now realize that it IS not just possible to install green infrastructure, but it is economically beneficial as well.

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