ABSTRACT
Sustainability in urban watersheds encompasses those activities designed to achieve and maintain dynamic equilibrium within the major physical systems performing their work in the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. A sustainable urban watershed would have graded and swimmable streams, swimmable lakes, a stable and regionally appropriate diversity of plant and animal populations, rehabilitated brownfields not posing a risk to groundwater and surface water, the absence of an urban heat island, limited invasive species, and the absence of any identifiable linkages between its water, soil, and air qualities and the occurrence of disease in plants, animals, or humans.
Sustainability is defined as creating and maintaining conditions under which humans can exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations. Note that the definition states “productive harmony.” One may ask, in productive harmony with what? The answer is with the environment. Therefore, in order to achieve some level of sustainability we must understand the environment and also understand the aspects of how any human-induced activity impacts the environment. Sustainability is then the outcome of analyzing the aspects of facility operations with the natural environment and developing and engineering methods to either minimize or eliminate harmful potential impacts.
