San Francisco 49ers new green football stadium

New 49er stadium.

The San Francisco 49ers are getting a new football stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., and there’s one particular landscape feature being built that we think is pretty cool and environmentally-friendly.

The massive construction project features a bioretention system, an innovative way to control stormwater runoff that pollutes local waterways. As you can imagine, a venue with seating for about 70,000 or so fans would require lots and lots of parking spaces, sidewalks and other hardscaping. Rain falling on parking spaces, for example, would wash grease, oil leaked from cars and other petrochemicals into storm drains and right into a local creek that eventually flows into the San Francisco Bay.

The contractors, however, used a low-impact development technique to slow the flow of runoff, filter that rainwater on site. They designed a bioretention system that collects runoff, prevents it from eroding surrounding natural landscapes, and treats the polluted stormwater on site. The stadium site will have six bioretention systems in parking lots and in the area next to the stadium. The bioretention and biofiltration system looks like any other parking lot planting strip. It will likely have flowers or trees, but in the trenches below are a series of pipes, gravel, soil, and other material that filters and then carries treated water out of the system. The stadium project was required to meet tough California rules; the treatment soil in the system had to retain 5 inches of water per hour.

Contact Ecoyards if you’d like to build a football stadium like this in your backyard.  😊