Greening Gets Down and Dirty
By: Timothy B. Wheeler, The Baltimore Sun, August 2010
To be truly green, you have to get down and dirty, it seems. As Baltimore officials begin to tackle the polluted runoff fouling the harbor and the Chesapeake Bay, they are turning to a technique long used by farmers.
It's not enough simply to strip off some of the city's ubiquitous pavement and plant grass. The ground beneath that asphalt and concrete often remains as hard and impervious as the man-made surface it's replacing. And the rainfall will just keep running off — washing fertilizer, pet waste, oil and other contaminants into storm drains and nearby streams.
So to make that urban hardpan act more like a natural sponge and cut down on storm-water pollution, city officials are trying out the agricultural process known as "sub-soiling." Read more...
