‘Lego’ Cells Buried Beneath West Central Sidewalks as Part of Stormwater Project
Kip Hill | The Spokesman-Review
In West Central, there’s a great future in plastics.
That’s the hope of Spokane’s public works department, which has spent the summer burying a network of plastic chambers on block corners throughout the historic neighborhood. When finished, the structures – called Silva Cells – will trap tens of thousands of gallons of stormwater runoff beneath the sidewalks and prevent it from entering Spokane’s combined sewer system. When that system is inundated, untreated sewage flows into the Spokane River, occurrences that must be limited under discharge agreements between the city and environmental regulators.
It’s the city’s first experience with the technology, which was developed by an urban landscaping firm called DeepRoot based in San Francisco. The appearance of the plastic framing, which is buried and covered with wheelchair-accessible sidewalks, grasses, shrubs and trees, has prompted more than a few analogies from the city’s engineering team…(Read the full story)
