Simply green: sound environmental programs need not be complicated. The Governor's Awards for Environmental Excellence.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Environment

ENVIRONMENTAL regulations can be horrifically complicated, but oftentimes the best green ideas are quite simple. That's the lesson to be learned from the environmental experiences of a number of Indiana companies.

The state of Indiana regularly honors companies and organizations that have implemented forward-thinking and successful environmental programs and policies. The case studies below are among the most recent winners of the Governor's Awards for Environmental Excellence. For a complete list of honorees, visit the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's web site at www.in.gov/idem/topics.

Bioswales in Valparaiso.

When developing a subdivision, especially in relatively flat Indiana, dealing with stormwater can be quite a challenge, involving a network of sewers, drainage ditches, retention ponds and the like. The people behind a Valparaiso development called Harrison West opted for a much different approach, one that looks a lot more like Mother Nature's approach.

"Stormwater management is a very big topic tot the federal and state Department of Environmental Management," says Gary Green of Wagner Homes, an environmental-award honoree in Valparaiso. "More often than not, a development is required to put in storm sewers."

Not so in Harrison West.

"What was installed was a series of 'bioswales,'" he says, or vegetated swales designed to collect rainwater and filter it through native grasses before it enters tributaries.

What's so important about filtering rainwater? "When you have rainwater that comes down, there is particulate matter on the roads or in soils than eventually drains to the tributaries that lead to lake Michigan," Green explains. Such contaminants might be silt, road salt, herbicides and pesticides from lawn-care products or other things that fall upon a subdivision's roads, driveways and yards. "We put it into the bioswales and filter it before it gets to the tributary."

The genius of the plan is its simplicity It makes use of natural filters, recognizing the fact that many forms of plant life can do a great job of filtering stormwater, as can rocks and gravel. Various elements of the subdivision's design--which also involved The Lannert Group, a Chicago-area landscape-architecture firm--steer water into the bioswales. For example, roads do not have standard curbs, opting instead for attractive lines of stones that help divert and filter the water.

The stormwater plan is only one of the green features of Harrison...