OMG! MAKES PROGRESS

ASLF, in partnership with Onondaga County Water Environment Protection (WEP), launched the One Million Gallons! (OMG!) Community Partnership Program in 2020, a bold campaign to intercept 1 million gallons of stormwater each year from the combined sewer system in Syracuse by the year 2025.

How do we do it? We partner with businesses, public entitiesand community groups to install Green Infrastructure (GI) on private and public property. Example projects include rain gardens, bio-retention areas, permeable pavement, tree trenches, bioswales, green roofs, and rain barrels (description of each can be found at https://aslf.org/omg/). Design and construction of the GI projects are fully funded by OMG!. A Community Advisory Committee will guide ASLF’s OMG! work with partners ensuring that we actively engage them in project development, design, and maintenance.

Members of the community have already helped us to identify potential sites for OMG! projects. We’re in discussion with over half a dozen partners on potential projects. Two have been selected to move into into design phase: the Dunbar Park project on the Southside of the City and the Syracuse Cultural Workers’ project on the Northside.

The concept for the potential Dunbar Park project at 1439 S State Street is to replace the deteriorating basketball court with a porous paving surface, under which an infiltration stone bed could retain stormwater runoff from S. State Street, allowing the water to percolate into the subgrade soil instead of going into the sewer system. The new porous court surface absorbs rainwater so quickly that the court would stay almost dry and be played on immediately after rain. A total of over 616,000 gallons of stormwater runoff could be removed by this project from the combined sewer system every year.

The project developed with Syracuse Cultural Workers on the North Side of the City is located just outside Hawley Green Neighborhood on Lodi Street. Syracuse Cultural Workers’ parking lots will be retrofitted with a rain garden and a porous paving system, respectively. This will collectively remove about 200,000 gallons of runoff annually from the combined sewer system. We are also working with Syracuse Cultural Workers on a GI-themed mural to be painted on one of the exterior walls of their office building.

We hope you will reach out to us at 315-475-1170 or christine.body@aslf.org if you have an idea for a GI installation. You can also find more information at https://aslf.org/omg/ or by following us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ASLF1982) for news on this project and others.