Water Resources Collections and Archives

The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) provides a strategy for the protection, improvement and restoration of water bodies across Europe. However, in urbanized areas where the drainage network has been engineered for flood conveyance and floodplains have been densely developed, the cost of restoration is usually disproportionate to the ecological benefits such restoration would provide. This project applies the EU WFD to the densely urbanized Lower Sausal Creek Watershed in Oakland, California. While the WFD provides economic insight, recent popularity of stormwater intervention strategies in US urban areas offer alternatives to in-stream creek restoration with additional community benefits. Our Lower Sausal Creek Watershed Stormwater Management Plan addresses stormwater pollution and detention through small, cost-effective landscape features at the lot level. The strategies include retention/ conveyance swales with trees, neighborhood trees, large lot interventions and the use of native plants, which altogether would deal with 100% of 2-year storm events in the lower watershed as well as allow partial detention of larger storms.