Massive quantities of rain and snow fall from the sky every year, burdening city infrastructures and causing pollution, disease and erosion. (Also it’s lame to wear so many coats. Thanks for that, Midwest.)

While nature is equipped to handle such output, cities are not … as you probably know. Instead, they’re coated with impermeable surfaces: cement, concrete, asphalt. These surfaces cling to the ground, rooftops and everything in between, giving water nowhere to go but into the sewers, causing combined sewer overflow events (CSO events or CSOs).

These occur because our sewers aren’t mean to manage stormwater. They handle wastewater and sewage from our homes and businesses, funneling them toward treatment plants before they head back into the environment, and they only have so much capacity.

When stormwater overfills infrastructure and causes sewage to flow back out into the world, the results are gross … if not downright disastrous. Think of stormwater like the bad guy, with a cape made from untold gallons of water just waiting to cause all that damage.

We say: No to that, Stormwater Guy. We’re having none of your shenanigans.

In addition to green roofs, the gold standard for stormwater management, here are a few other ways we can defeat him.