What does Seattle’s drainage and wastewater system need to succeed?
A dugout at Magnuson Park collects groundwater, surface water, snow melt, rainwater, and runoff. Image courtesy of Seattle Parks & Recreation.
Summer is here and the rain is gone—for now! Cooler and wetter days may seem like a distant memory at the height of July, but this is the perfect time to talk about what Shape Our Water analysis work says about our City when it is raining.
If you’ve been following along with us since 2019, you know that Shape Our Water is building a plan our with community for the next 50 years of Seattle’s drainage and wastewater systems. These systems affect how Seattle looks, feels, and functions as water flows in, out, and around our city.
Meadowbrook Pond. Image courtesy of Seattle Parks & Recreation.
Part of building a plan includes gaining a better understanding of how our current drainage and wastewater systems manage challenges like climate change, a growing population, and inequitable past investment. To build our knowledge and gather valuable information to support the planning process, we’ve recently completed several multi-year analyses.
Looking at how our current systems perform, clarifying the problems we are trying to solve, and understanding how our stakeholders experience our systems are all important benefits of these analyses. By looking deeper, we can start to see the connections between the past and the future. The Shape Our Water journey continues! We hope you will be with us to collaboratively plan and think together about future improvements.
Learn more about our analyses and some of the themes that floated to the top.
