How to keep rain where it falls?

• Council ‘sucker’ truck sucking up sediment from a stormwater pit in Myrtle Street, Chippendale, 24 March 2026

Why keep rain where it falls?

Reasons include:

·      Reduce or end pollution from runoff carrying plastics, oil, grease, pesticides into rivers, harbours, oceans;

·      Increase plant and tree growth to cool streets, towns and cities;

·      Reduce street and city heat in summer from the shade of the trees and plants

·      Reduce asset maintenance costs of local councils by avoiding pumping out the sediment from parks, streets, footpaths carried by the water running into the drainage pits.

• Typical blocked stormwater pit in Myrtle Street, Chippendale, 24 March 2026.

No stormwater gets in the pit and so raw sewage overflows as the stormwater and sewage pipes leak and are unable to drain away both the sewage and the stormwater.

Another reason to keep rain where it falls: in torrential, heavy rain some of that water gets into both the sewage drains and the stormwater drains and causes the sewage drains to overflow with sewage into the roads and gutters.

There’s no such thing as waste in nature, except in human cities where waste is everywhere, created by a failure of human imagination.

It’s easy and cheap to keep rain where it falls.

Look at how, as the video shows, we keep rain where it falls in Chippendale, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

 by

Michael Mobbs