EPA supported the city of Emeryville, California in the development of "Stormwater Guidelines for Green, Dense Redevelopment." Emeryville, which is a suburb of San Francisco, began in the 1990s reclaiming, remediating and redeveloping the many brownfields within its borders. These efforts sparked a successful economic rebound. The city did not stop there, and decided in the 2000s to harness the redevelopment progress for even better environmental outcomes, in particular that related to stormwater runoff, by requiring in 2005 the use of on-site GI practices in all new private development projects. The city faced several challenges, including a high water table, tidal flows, clay soils, contaminated soil and water, and few absorbent natural areas among the primarily impervious, paved parcels of existing and redeveloped industrial sites. The guidelines, and an accompanying spreadsheet model, were developed to make as much use of redevelopment sites as possible for handling stormwater. The main strategies fell into several categories:
* Reducing the need, space and stormwater impact of motor vehicle parking by way of increased densities, height limits and floor area ratios; shared, stacked, indoor and unbundled automobile parking; making the best use of on-street parking and pricing strategies; car-sharing; free citywide mass transit; requiring one secure indoor bicycle parking space per bedroom and better bicycle and pedestrian roadway infrastructure.
* Sustainable landscape design features, such as tree preservation and minimum rootable soil volumes for new tree planting, use of structural soils, suspended paving systems, bioretention and biofiltration strategies and requiring the use of the holistic practices of Bay-Friendly Landscaping.
* Water storage and harvesting through cisterns and rooftop containers.
* Other strategies to handle or infiltrate water on development and redevelopment sites.