Low Impact Development Strategies

This page last updated: January 3, 2005

The following is excerpted from "Low Impact Development Design Strategies," by Prince George County, MD, Dept. of Environmental Resources, June 1999.

LID principles were developed specifically to address runoff issues associated with new residential, commercial, and industrial development.

LID can achieve stormwater control through the creation of a hydrologically functional landscape that mimics the natural hydrologic regime of a site.

LID offers an innovative approach to stormwater management - one that does not rely on the conventional end-of-pipe or in-the-pipe structural methods, but instead treats and controls water close or at its source.

This objective is accomplished by:

• Minimizing stormwater impacts to the extent practicable. Techniques include reducing imperviousness, conserving natural resources and ecosystems, maintaining natural drainage course, reducing use of pipes, and minimizing clearing and grading.

• Providing runoff storage measures dispersed uniformly throughout a site's landscape with the use of a variety of detention, retention, and runoff practices.

• Maintaining predevelopment time of concentration by strategically routing flows to maintain travel times and control the discharge.

• Implementing effective public education programs to encourage property and developers to incorporate and maintain functional landscape management.

PASCOWILDLIFE IS HOSTING A LID WORKSHOP ON APRIL 29, 2005 AT THE FLORIDA AQUARIUM. See schedule for details.