Green Streets, Green Jobs, Green Towns (G3) Guides and Publications

The G3 Guides and Publications resources can be used to help support your community's green street project.  To quickly find what you are looking for, the guides and publications have been organized into the following five categories:

• Policy, Regulations, and Incentives
• Planning and Design
• Construction, Operation, and Maintenance
• Financing and Economic Benefits
• Green Jobs and Training 

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Policy, Regulations, and Incentives

• Green Infrastructure Case Studies: Municipal Policies for Managing Stormwater with Green Infrastructure (PDF) (76 pp, 8.2 MB) This report examines the policies adopted by 12 local governments that have successfully promoted green infrastructure, as well as the policy drivers and policy outcomes. A menu of policy options is presented and barriers and lessons learned are summarized.
   
• Fresh Coast Green Solutions: Weaving Milwaukee's Green and Grey Infrastructure into a Sustainable Future (PDF)(28 pp, 4 MB) Fresh Coast Green Solutions provides a better understand of why we need to reduce stormwater runoff and how we can do it with green infrastructure.  This guidebook describes the concept that we all need to do our part in protecting and conserving our water resources.   
   
• Green City Clean Waters: The City of Philadelphia's Program for Combined Sewer Overflow Control Program Summary (PDF) (48 pp, 4.5 MB)  Philadelphia's 25 year plan to protect and enhance watershed by managing stormwater with innovative green infrastructure.

• Stormwater Solutions: Turning Oregon's Rain Back into a Resource (PDF)(68 pp, 2 MB)  EPA developed this guide for local government officials, planners, and developers to illustrate the social, economic, and environmental impacts of parking policies and to describe strategies for balancing parking with other community goals. The guide also provides examples of cities and towns that are successfully using these strategies. 

Planning and Design 

• Storm Smart Cities: Integrating Green Infrastructure into Local Hazard Mitigation Plans  This guide examines how communities can integrate green infrastructure into their Local Hazard Mitigation Plan.  It provides a case study of green infrastructure integration efforts in the City of Huntington, West Virginia and the West Virginia Region 2 Planning & Development Area.

• Storm Smart Schools: A Guide to Integrate Green Stormwater Infrastructure to Meet Regulatory Compliance and Promote Environmental Literacy This guide captures the approach used to identify and select a school and the types of green infrastructure BMPS available to meet regulatory requirements and provide multiple community and educational benefits.  This guide serves as a resource to community stakeholders, local governments and schools to address the process including planning, design, construction, operation and maintanence and longterm stewardship for green infrastucture on school grounds.  
   
• EPA's Green Infrastructure List of Design Manuals States, counties, municipalities, and nonprofits across the United States and Canada have developed stormwater design manuals that emphasize green infrastructure and low impact design. Each manual includes a detailed design guidelines tailored to the local physical and regulatory landscape and planning and design approaches as well as structural stormwater controls.
   
• Green Infrastructure Opportunities that Arise During Municipal Operations (PDF)(36 pp, 3.2 MB) This document provides approaches local government officials and municipal program managers in small to midsize communities can use to incorporate green infrastructure components into work they are doing in public spaces. The guide demonstrates ways in which projects can be modified relatively easily and at a low cost recognizing that municipal resources can be limited. 
   
• Managing Wet Weather with Green Infrastructure: Municipal Handbook on Green Streets (PDF)(19 pp, 1.8 MB)  This paper evaluates programs and policies that have been used to successfully integrate green infrastructure into roads and right-of-ways.  Some municipalities are capitalizing on the benefits gained by introducing green infrastructure in transportation applications. 
   
• Green Streets: A conceptual Guide to Effective Green Streets Design Solutions (PDF) (7 pp, 5.7 MB)  This guide provides an overview of different strategies that can be employed in transportation rights-of-way at the local or neighborhood scale.  It reviews several different type of transportation right of ways including residential streets, commercial streets, arterial streets and alleys.   
   
• Town of Bladensburg, Maryland, Green Streets and Green Jobs Charrette and Design Guidebook (PDF) (37 pp, 23.3 MB)  This guidebook provides an introduction to going green, including why it makes sense, what makes a green street, and definitions and background information on green technologies and approaches. These technologies focus on achieving watershed protection through Green Infrastructure and LID techniques, renewable energy, green construction, and recycled materials use. Information on green financing, green jobs, and green business incubation is also covered. 
   
• The City of Chicago Green Alley Handbook: An action guide to creater a greener, environmentally sustainable Chicago (PDF) (24 pp, 3.7 MB)  This handbook will explain why the city is interested in sustainable alley design, illustrate the BMP techniques the City will use in green alley design, and provide sample layouts of how these elements have been combined in pilot applications. In addition, information and resources are provided for property owners interested in implementing their own environmental BMPs

Construction, Operation, and Maintenance 

• Low Impact Development Construction Guide (PDF)(95 pp, 10 MB)  This guide includes an overview of common LID construction errors, a discussion of how construction procedures and sequencing for LID sites differ from conventional sites and recommendations for improving contracts, plans, and communication to avoid construction errors.
• Staying Green: Strategies to Improve Operations and Maintenance of Green Infrastructure in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (PDF)  A joint publication by American Rivers and Green for All that discusses the operation and maintenance needs of green infrastructure.  

Financing and Economic Benefits 

• Community Based Public Private Partnerships and Alternative Marked-Based Tools for Integrated Stormwater Infrastructure: A Guide for Local Governments (PDF) (127 pp, 2.4 MB) EPA Region 3 and its partners developed this guide to identify tools to help Mid-Atlantic communities address water quality challenges through faster, cheaper, and greener methods.
   
• Guidebook of Financial Tools: Paying for Environmental Systems (PDF) (223 pp, 2.6 MB) This guidebook provides information on approximately 340 financial tools that include traditional means of raising revenue, borrowing capital, enhancing credit, creating public-private partnerships, and providing technical assistance.
   
• The Value of Green Infrastructure A Guide to Recognizing Its Economic, Environmental and Social Benefits (PDF)(80 pp, 3.12 MB)  This guide examines key considerations involved in assessing the economic merits of green infrastructure practices.  In clarifying how to assign value to potential green infrastructure benefits, this guide can assist decision-makers in evaluating options for water management. A more clear view of green infrastructure's values will help communities decide where, when and to what extent green infrastructure practices should become part of future planning, development and redevelopment.
   
• BANKING ON GREEN: A Look at How Green Infrastructure Can Save Municipalities Money and Provide Economic Benefits Community-wide (PDF)(44 pp, 990 K)  A joint report by American Rivers, the Water Environment Federation, the American Society of Landscape Architects and ECONorthwest that focuses on the economic impacts caused by polluted urban stormwater runoff.

Green Jobs and Training 

• Water Works: Rebuilding Infrastructure, Creating Jobs, Greening the Environment (PDF) (62 pp, 5.6 MB)  This report focuses on the need to invest in a more sustainable stormwater management system. It explores the numbers and types of jobs created by smart investments in stormwater management, including combined sewer overflow (CSO) correction and pipe repair and replacement. The report also focuses on investments in green infrastructure—infrastructure that mimics natural solutions— to clean our waters and strengthen our communities.