Healthier Rivers Through Urban Agirculture

Reader Contribution by Daniel Dermitzel
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Spring is the time of year when the region’s Riverkeepers are particularly concerned about water quality and stream health.  With the onset of strong seasonal rains comes the risk of sewer overflows from combined sewer systems throughout the Kansas City Metro area, and the result is increased pollution of our creeks, streams and rivers. 

The growing popularity of urban agriculture presents an opportunity to reduce the amount of water and pollutants entering our combined sewer systems.  Urban farmers and our community as a whole have much to gain from implementing a few simple techniques to reduce runoff and pollution of our urban watershed.  Our productive urban landscapes (i.e., farms and gardens) have the potential to be more environmentally friendly than the many chemically treated lawns and unproductive green spaces we currently see throughout our city.  Converting a lawn to an organically managed agricultural landscape can promote a healthy environment and capture ecosystem services (such as food production) which were previously underutilized.  But to realize these benefits, it is important that we keep several key design principles in mind as we build our urban farms and gardens. 

1. Soil Management

From the perspective of storm water management, an important benefit of creating productive urban landscapes is that farmers tend to reduce soil compaction in the process.  Storm water runoff is aggravated by the many impervious and compacted pervious surfaces in our cities.   

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