Onondaga County's CSO Abatement Program – Lessons Learned and Overcoming Challenges of Large Scale Green Infrastructure Deployment

Onondaga County New York has been implementing an amended consent judgment (ACJ) for control of combined sewer overflows (CSO) to Onondaga Lake since January 1999. Through the leadership of the newly elected County Executive, Joanne M. Mahoney, the ACJ was amended again in November 2009, the ACJ was amended again in November 2009 to incorporate green infrastructure (GI) strategies to further reduce wet weather overflows and to replace a portion of the planned grey infrastructure. The new program, called “Save the Rain,” is implementing various projects to confirm performance metrics as part of a system-wide build out of green infrastructure to meet the ACJ requirements. The CSO capture goals embodied in the ACJ will require green infrastructure to be significantly scaled up throughout the city to increase CSO capture by 6% and overall system capture to 95%. Developing targeted implementation approaches for green infrastructure is a primary focus of the program in order to use green infrastructure to manage over 470 acres of impervious area. The program is addressing many issues both technical and policy oriented in nature to develop GI implementation programs to scale up implementation to the required levels in the ACJ.