Resource Type: Best Practice Guide
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Smart CSO Control Plans
Balancing Green and Gray Solutions to CSO Management
The purpose of this report, Balancing Green and Gray Solutions to CSO Management, is to provide guidance to CSO permit holders and their Supplemental CSO Community Teams, to help guide the development of LTCPs for determining an optimal green/gray balance. Although the target audience is permittees and their communities, other readers should benefit from the summary of current CSO programs. It is recognized that there are varying paths towards inclusion of GI into LTCPs. Developing a methodology to measure and communicate the balance of green and gray infrastructure is an important component of CSO LTCPs. It is also desirable to promote the use of best practices like the USEPA’s community alternatives analysis roadmap with all CSO permittees. This report is not, however, intended to provide detailed technical guidance to permittees.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Other Best Practices
Procurement Toolkit for Cities and Utilities
This Free Procurement Toolkit for Cities helps city and utility officials make critical early stage procurement decisions, including which “big city” procurement tool is most relevant and how to apply it to build resilience. The toolkit focuses on ways cities and utilities can use current procurement systems to enable better outcomes.
The procurement toolkit was piloted by seven U.S. cities: Anchorage (AK), El Paso (TX), Camden County MUA (NJ), Gary (IN), Norfolk (VA), Imperial Beach (CA) and Providence (RI).
With the generous support of the Kresge Foundation, re:focus partners and The Atlas Marketplace brought together a cohort of seven cities with eight private sector implementing partner organizations to apply three innovative “big city” procurement tools to tackle major infrastructure challenges in smaller cities.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Successful and Beneficial Green Infrastructure
Accounting for Trees in Stormwater Models
This paper, Accounting for Trees in Stormwater Models, is intended to help the stormwater engineering community more easily account for trees in runoff and pollutant load calculations so that they can more readily incorporate them into their stormwater management strategies.
Funded by the US Forest Service, the paper was developed with input from experts in stormwater engineering and urban forestry. This paper further augments a robust collection of resources the Center for Watershed Protection completed in 2017 on “Making Urban Trees Count”, which includes a comprehensive literature review and research-based tools for crediting trees in stormwater and water quality management programs.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Successful and Beneficial Green Infrastructure
Green Infrastructure & Health Guide
This guide, Green Infrastructure & Health, provides some general principles, best practices, and experiences about how best to use green infrastructure to promote better health equity. It is designed for use by managers, engineers, community organizations, planners, and others who are siting, designing, building, and stewarding green infrastructure in urban areas and rural towns across Canada and the United States. The guide is a product of several Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange cities coming together to build stronger partnerships between green infrastructure providers and health providers. The guide is organized in sections that can help green infrastructure providers and their partners answer important questions about how green infrastructure can improve health.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Successful and Beneficial Green Infrastructure
Storm Smart Cities: Integrating Green Infrastructure into Local Hazard Mitigation Plans
This guide, Storm Smart Cities: Integrating Green Infrastructure into Local Hazard Mitigation Plans, is a case study of Huntington, West Virginia and early efforts to consider how green infrastructure could be incorporated into local hazard mitigation plans. It follows a partnership of local, state, and federal organizations and their collaborative effort to address local flooding and protect water quality. While the effort is ongoing, the Storm Smart Cities guide captures some early lessons learned that can benefit other communities interested in pursuing a similar approach. It includes recommendations for communities on integrating green infrastructure into local hazard mitigation plans.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Successful and Beneficial Green Infrastructure
Step-by-Step Guide to Integrating Community Input into Green Infrastructure Projects
ELI and its partner Amigos Bravos drafted this Guide to Integrating Community Input into Green Infrastructure Projects to help local governments integrate community input into their green infrastructure projects. It sets out eight steps that local governments can take and, for each step, provides details and tips to help local governments as they move through the process.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Smart CSO Control Plans
Evaluating Green Infrastructure: A Combined Sewer Overflow Control Alternative for Long Term Control Plans
The intent of this document, Evaluating Green Infrastructure: A Combined Sewer Overflow Control Alternative for Long Term Control Plans, is to provide guidance to Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) permittees within the State of New Jersey to evaluate green infrastructure (GI) as part of their Long Term Control Plans (LTCPs).
LTCP implementation will be a long and expensive process. Many of the alternatives that will ultimately be implemented to address CSOs will be built on publicly owned land, the cost of which will be borne primarily by the rate payer. GI, however, can and should be implemented both on publicly and privately owned land, allowing the cost of GI to be shared by both the rate payers and private developers.
This guidance is not intended to be the sole resource for evaluating this alternative. This guidance provides case studies, links, and resources to assist
a CSO permittee with including GI as part of its CSO Long Term Control Plan.
Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Effective and Financially Sustainable Systems
Asset Management Definitions Guidebook
The Asset Management Definitions Guidebook defines terms commonly used in water utility Asset Management practice. American Water Works Association’s Asset Management Committee developed it to help improve learning, consistency, and communication in the water industry. The Committee encourages professionals throughout the industry to use the guidebook, and expects the terminology in products that the Committee sponsors (e.g., publications and presentations) to be consistent with it.
As Asset Management practice in the water industry matures, its terminology is likely to change. Thus, the Committee plans to revise this guidance periodically to reflect changes, and invites people that use the document to send the Committee comments on how it can be improved.

Resource Type: Best Practice Guide | Report Topic: Successful and Beneficial Green Infrastructure
New Jersey A•I•M•S4
New Jersey Advanced and Integrated Menu of Strategies for Sustainable Sewer and Stormwater Systems (NJ A•I•M•S4)
This downloadable resource for sewer and stormwater infrastructure system managers, was developed by Jersey Water Works members to offer a menu of strategies for managing sewer and stormwater systems that achieve better results at lower cost. The guide is flexible, and seeks to offer options for a diverse range of communities and managers of sewer and stormwater infrastructure, who know their enterprise best and can assess the applicability, impact, affordability and political feasibility of each action.
The New Jersey A•I•M•S4 program includes:
- A Guide to Options for Effective Sewer and Stormwater Management; and
- A Strategy Checklist with action steps, methods, and resources from which communities, utilities or municipalities that own, maintain and operate sewer and stormwater infrastructure can select to improve cost efficiency, deliver better environmental and community benefits, track progress and link to resources; and
- A Crosswalk to NJDEP CSO Permit Requirements

Resource Type: Best Practice Guide Topic: Successful and Beneficial Green Infrastructure
Green Infrastructure in Parks: A Guide to Collaboration, Funding, and Community Engagement
The green infrastructure guide from the Environmental Protection Agency provides a stepwise approach for building partnerships between stormwater managers and park managers, including information on how to identify and engage partners, build relationships, involve the community, leverage funding opportunities, and identify green infrastructure opportunities. It includes recommendations on the types of projects that are most likely to attract positive attention and funding, and which provide a wide range of benefits.
Green Infrastructure in Parks: A Guide to Collaboration, Funding, and Community Engagement (Environmental Protection Agency)
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