Green Stormwater Infrastructure Development

The City of Raleigh adopted regulations in 2017 to make it easier to include green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) in land development. These features reduce environmental impacts on streams, lakes, and rivers.

This program is part of Raleigh’s Sustainable Business Toolkit, a collection of programs designed to help businesses and other organizations save money and help reach the goals in the city’s Community Climate Action Plan.

Common Examples

Click through the images to see common examples of GSI and select the name to learn more details about each type.

Benefits

Developers! Make your development plans more “green” by using green stormwater infrastructure on your next project. Here are a few benefits:

1. These features serve many purposes in required landscape area. GSI decreases landscaping and stormwater management costs and stormwater management doesn't “compete” for a site’s available land area.
2. GSI features in the right-of-way manage stormwater coming from streets. This makes more land area available for other uses. It also reduces infrastructure costs.
3. There is more flexibility in a site’s development design when you use these features.
4. Choose from more stormwater treatment options in Watershed Protection Overlay Districts. It's a good alternative to traditional practices, like wet ponds. These options reduce stormwater velocity, volume, and pollution.

Green Raleigh Review

Use Green Raleigh Review to add green stormwater features and energy efficient practices to your site plan. This process works with site review, bundled site review, and building plans express commercial review.