KC Green Infrastructure Manual

Kansas City, Missouri

KC Green Stormwater Infrastructure Manual cover (above)
and interior spread (below).

How does this project advance the three pillars of sustainability — social equity, economic vitality and environmental stewardship?

Environmental Stewardship: By providing consistent design and construction criteria for green stormwater infrastructure, the city is ultimately designing and building more sustainable stormwater systems that include both green and gray components.
 
Economic Vitality: The Green Stormwater Infrastructure Manual sets the expectation for the infrastructure end-product. This provides better contractor bids, and therefore better use of city funds. In addition, the construction of green stormwater infrastructure can provide benefits to the community beyond stormwater management.
 
Social Equity: Investing in quality design and construction of green stormwater infrastructure is investing in our neighborhoods with tangible benefits for the community.

The Kansas City, Missouri Green Stormwater Infrastructure Manual is a design tool intended to take green stormwater infrastructure from the conceptual design phase, through detailed design, construction, initial establishment, and long-term maintenance.

Project Goals:

• To supplement the regional Manual of Best Management Practices for Stormwater Quality published by the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) and the American Public Works Association(APWA) BMP Manual — not replace.
• To provide design guidance and criteria, detail templates, and construction specifications including maintenance activities for green stormwater infrastructure components.
• To provide an integrated framework for design and construction of green stormwater infrastructure.
• To provide consistent design and construction criteria across city projects.
• To provide a design tool to meet water quality regulations.

Project Description:

The Kansas City, Missouri Green Stormwater Infrastructure Manual is a design tool intended to take green stormwater infrastructure from the conceptual design phase, through detailed design, construction, initial establishment and long-term maintenance. The manual takes a “design component”-based approach, breaking green stormwater infrastructure down to the features that ultimately work together to promote the overall stormwater and water quality function of the practice. It provides design guidelines, detail templates, construction specifications and maintenance activities for the green stormwater infrastructure components, taking steps to standardize these features and ultimately to improve how they are designed, built and maintained in the long term. This manual builds on the base set regionally by the BMP Manual, and assists the planner, designer and contractor in including the necessary information to build green stormwater infrastructure. By providing detailed design guidance, the city is setting the expectation for green stormwater design and construction in the future.

Community Benefits and Lessons Learned:

The development of the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Manual was a direct result of the lessons learned interdepartmentally with green stormwater infrastructure design and construction during the past 10 years. It was recognized that developing a manual would improve quality control during both design and construction, and truly set the expectation for designers and contractors. In addition, it was recognized that the manual was needed as a resource citywide, for both capital projects and private development design and construction.

Funding Sources and Partnerships:

The city of Kansas City, Missouri, provided funding for the development of the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Manual was provided by through the Smart Sewer program. The manual was developed in collaboration with the City Manager’s Office, Water, Parks, Planning and Public Works departments.