TY - JOUR T1 - Taking advantage of stormwater control basins in urban landscapes JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 100 LP - 103 VL - 46 IS - 2 AU - Bruce K. Ferguson Y1 - 1991/03/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/46/2/100.abstract N2 - FLOOD control, base flow control, and water quality concerns frequently mandate storage and treatment of urban runoff. Consequently, urban developers have a new line item in their construction program. In addition to roads, houses, and parking lots, there must be some sort of runoff storage basin. These basins may be only a small portion of the developed area. But they are located in the midst of living and working communities, and they have inadvertently become a prominent part of the urban landscape. Too often such basins become disruptive wastes of urban land. It has been too easy for them to be given a technical purpose only and to be made mere intrusions in the life of urban communities. Local residents, recognizing ugly, dysfunctional basins as irrelevant or hazardous to their well-being, have had no motivation to maintain them properly. It is possible to mold stormwater basins into integrated components of the urban landscape in ways that provide aesthetic, recreational, maintenance, economic, and ecological values. When used positively, stormwater basins can contribute to the human and natural environment. They can be sculpted, planted, contoured, and built of the right kinds of materials on a site-specific basis (9). Stormwater contol basins have certain … ER -