Green Infrastructure

Raleigh's floodplains perform important resilience functions: they absorb and store flood water, and help to reduce the urban heat island effect. Raleigh is working to preserve the flood storage capacity of our floodplains by limiting future development in flood prone areas to reduce our community's exposure to hazardous flooding, and by encouraging the installation of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI). GSI can retain flood water, reduce flood impacts and improve water quality in our watershed by filtering rain water slowly through plants and soils, rather than moving it directly into our streams through pipes. This helps protect our watershed, our community, and our downstream neighbors.