Maryland’s Prince George County turns to P3s to build green infrastructure

Maryland's Prince George's County must comply with a federal "pollution diet" to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Over the next 10 years, the county must convert 15,000 acres of watertight surfaces—almost 5% of the county's total area—into surfaces that absorb or treat rainwater.

That will require adding some 46,000 stormwater devices. The county is turning to a novel approach to get the rain gardens, cisterns, permeable pavements, and other devices for filtering and absorbing stormwater built.

These features are geared to slow the rapid runoff from roads and rooftops in order to reduce pollution that flows into sewers and which then makes its way into the bay.

Its partnership with Corvias Solutions, which is in charge of designing, building, and maintaining the improvements, has been hired to convert 2,000 acres by 2017. If the company performs well, that amount could double.

The county will also have its own team of workers to work on another 2,000 acres. Officials will be able compare the performance of the two teams and then decide how to proceed.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.