Most of us don’t think much about rain unless it’s ruining a picnic or we’ve just had a car washed. But over the past few decades, urban and suburban development has had a dramatic effect on how the ground absorbs rain and other precipitation. Without proper storm water management, any new development – whether it’s housing, industrial, or even landscape design – can have a dangerous impact on the ecology of local streams and rivers, and even risk polluting potable water sources. Rain itself is a valuable and healthy component to any ecosystem, but poorly-planned development can turn it into a veritable poison once it becomes storm water.

Storm water management of healthy storm water is one of the specialties of Paul W. Steinbeiser Landscape Design and Construction. We’re not interested in simply creating a pleasant landscape design on your property; we want to ensure that it will interact with the local environment in a healthy way for years to come. Good storm water management is an important part of that mission.

New construction often means the clearing of native trees and other plants, and even some of the best replanting efforts can leave an area relatively bare for the time it takes newly planted trees to grow. Trees catch and absorb rain and snow, reducing the volume of precipitation that hits the ground and making its impact less intense. When trees and other plants are removed, it increases the amount of storm water hitting the ground, leading to erosion, which is bad for streams and rivers. Good storm water management can stop erosion before it starts.

Development also creates lots of paved surfaces, which are an impediment to good storm water management. Surfaces composed of concrete and macadam are impervious to rain, meaning the ground can’t absorb water in the way it’s meant to do. Too often, this means that storm water collects in pipes and culverts that empty into existing waterways, like streams and rivers. And when the volume of storm water is too great, it can increase the turbidity, or cloudiness, of water, making life difficult for native plants, insects and fish. It can also scour stream bottoms clean, effectively “deforesting” the waterway’s floor. When there’s too much storm water, management becomes a problem.

What’s more, the farther storm water has to travel along the ground, the more likely it is to pick up toxins like fertilizers, pesticides and litter, further harming water quality. The secret to avoiding these problems is good storm water management.

Paul W. Steinbeiser Landscape Design and Construction offers several solutions to the challenge of responsible storm water management. We can collect and contain storm water, by a management system that uses vegetated retention basins. You’ve seen the standard storm water management retention basins – ugly pits that add little to the aesthetic quality of an area. We’ll make your retention pond a thing of beauty, seeding it with native plants and turning into an ecologically sound wetland. We also use semi-permiable surface treatments in our landscape design, allowing storm water to seep into the ground, where it can recharge aquifers.

If you’re interested in a new landscape design that works with the natural environment and uses healthy storm water management techniques. contact us.

P.W. Steinbeiser offers storm water management solutions in Delaware, New Jersey and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you’re looking for quality storm water management in PA, NJ or DE, look no further than P.W. Steinbeiser Landscape Design and Construction