Green Roofs

ERIN DUERR /Journal Star file photo

It looks like Lincoln will have another green-roof  dotting the upper portions of the city. The Urban Development Department is working on a plan to build an 11,500-square-foot green roof on a building bound by by 13th, 14th, P and Q streets.


I'm a big supporter of finding a purpose for unused spaces. Fire escapes, alleyways and roof tops are the sorts of platforms that people glance at but largely ignore. Chicago made a concerted effort to green their rooftops a couple of years ago and found that green roofs last longer than conventional roofs, provide natural insulation and thereby reduce energy costs, create peaceful retreats for people, and absorb storm water.

On a wider scale, green roofs improve air quality and help reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect, a condition in which city and suburban developments absorb and trap heat. Remember the blisters you got as a kid when you who has walked across a scalding parking lot in the summertime? Your feet felt the effect of an Urban Heat Island.

One of the most famous American green rooftops, Chicago's City Hall, combines extensive, intensive, and the intermediary semi-intensive systems on one retrofitted roof. Under the Mayor's direction, the City of Chicago's Department of Environment City Hall pilot program kicked off a citywide push to support green rooftop systems with incentives and grants.

A survey of Lincoln's green rooftops is rather impressive, actually:

• The Arbor Day Foundation installed a 7,369-square-foot green roof
• Color Court installed a modular style green roof that covers about 20 percent of the roof
• The Prairie Building at the Pioneers Park Nature Center Prairie Building has a green roof planted with drought-tolerant plants
• The former Whittier Junior High has a small green roof that serves as a test plot for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Sandhills Publishing installed a 2,000-square-foot green roof on part of its parking garage last year.
• An 8,000-square-foot green roof has been planted on the new Assurity Life Insurance Co. headquarters

According to calculations by the Lower Platte South Natural Resources District  a 7,900-square-foot green roof system has the potential to capture, store and use nearly 100,000 gallons of rainfall and snowmelt annually that normally would end up in city storm drains.

In a town of this size I think that's a pretty impressive inventory. I'm glad to think we'll have one more to add to the list.
 

Read more: http://journalstar.com/news/local/green-roof-planned-for-catalyst-one-project/article_0fd707fd-643e-50a3-a219-7112193958cb.html#ixzz1i2JbDo3k