Puyallup Green Street

Puyallup has its first Green Street—though for now it’s still called 8^th Avenue.

The 8th Avenue Low-Impact Development (LID) retrofit encompasses more than 18,000 square feet of porous asphalt roadway, 3,200 square feet of permeable sidewalks, and 11 rain gardens. Thanks to these improvements, 100 percent of the block’s polluted stormwater runoff infiltrates soils and avoids entering storm drains—that’s an estimated 890,000 gallons of stormwater annually.

Choosing a green approach saved the city about $100,000, compared to a traditional construction that lacks a mechanism to purify water, and is built using regular asphalt, storm piping, and old-style catchment structures. Traditional methods would have sent the polluted water to Clarks Creek, from there to the Puyallup River, and eventually into Puget Sound.

The Green Street structures have proven to be both financially savvy and effective. Not only is Clarks Creek water quality protected (Clarks Creek is home to five species of salmon), but 8^th Avenue requires significantly less maintenance now that flooding events have been eliminated. In addition, the community benefits from a more beautiful neighborhood resulting in traffic calming and increased property values.

Funding Sources:

City of Puyallup
Washington State Department of Ecology

Congressional District: 10

Partners:

City of Puyallup
Washington State Department of Ecology
12,000 Rain Gardens
Local property owners

: Residents in the Green Streets neighborhood were key project partners and had shown an early interest in stormwater management through participation in Puyallup’s Rain Garden Program, as seen in this photo.

: This road had been pocketed with puddles and the asphalt was crumbling at the edges. Now it is pedestrian friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and all of the road’s stormwater is infiltrated on-site!