Exploring Milwaukee's Green Rooftops
Sourced from WTMJ-TV Milwaukee
Milwaukee has an ever-growing and changing skyline, and I'm not talking about the buildings. Instead, I'm talking about what is on top of those sky rises: green roofs.
Those are roofs constructed to have gardens, plants, and grass embedded in the fabric of the ceiling. It's not just a planter box on top of cement, it's truly grass as the roof. These plants and grasses are dying and growing all the time. In fact, these roofs serve an incredibly important function.
“So the green roof was designed to save up to a million gallons a year. We can say that over the ten years we’ve had it, it's actually surpassed that performance, so around 11 million gallons in total," Aryton Bryan, an environmental healthy and safety manager at Rockwell Automation, said.
On top of Rockwell's roof next to the clock tower is a 49,000 square foot green space that captures and absorbs rain.
It’s saving water by absorbing rainfall, instead of it sliding off roofs and going into sewers.
When there is too much rain, like there was on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Jones Island, Milwaukee's water treatment facility, can’t handle the sudden high volume of water coming. Instead of the water being treated, it’s allowed to be spilled directly into our streams, rivers, and lakes, bringing pollutants and sewage with it. That is the first time it has happened in 2021. It tends to happen a few times a year.
From the Living Architecture Monitor
