Green Infrastructure Program

As different parts of the country become drier, wetter, or hotter, green infrastructure can help improve community resilience today and into the future.

On this page:

• About the Program
• Types of Assistance
• How This Program Helps Build Resilience
• Connections to Other EPA, Federal, or Non-Governmental Efforts

About the Program

The EPA’s Green Infrastructure Program promotes the use of plants, soils, and nature itself to manage stormwater and create healthier urban environments. Green infrastructure practices can reduce the need for expensive gray infrastructure—pipes, storage facilities, and treatment systems—because plants, soils, and other media soak up, store, and use the rainwater. Communities can also create or preserve existing natural areas and parks to maintain a high quality of life for residents through flood protection, cleaner air and water, and more appealing transportation corridors and outdoor spaces.

Section 519 of the CWA requires the EPA to promote the use of green infrastructure and to coordinate the integration of green infrastructure into the EPA’s permitting and enforcement actions, planning efforts, research, technical assistance, and funding guidance. Additionally, the EPA is required to share information and coordinate efforts on green infrastructure with other federal, state, Tribal, and local governments, as well as the private sector.

Specifically, the EPA’s Green Infrastructure Program focuses on performing the following:

• Facilitating information exchange between communities, practitioners, and other green infrastructure stakeholders.
• Providing information, training, and other resources that increase the technical, financial, and managerial capacity necessary for successful green infrastructure implementation.
• Showcasing local success stories that highlight the multiple benefits of green infrastructure practices to provide a roadmap that other communities, practitioners, and regulatory stakeholders can follow.

Types of Assistance

The EPA’s Green Infrastructure Program offers several types of assistance to various partners. This assistance could help to implement projects to build climate resilience.

Technical Assistance

• Urban stormwater continues to be a persistent and growing source of water pollution across the United States. Climate change is leading to more intense weather events and dwindling water supplies. Together these conditions stress the performance of the nation’s water infrastructure. Green infrastructure is an adaptable and multifunctional approach to stormwater management and climate resiliency with many benefits for communities. The EPA’s Green Infrastructure Program has worked with over 50 communities to create conceptual green infrastructure designs, review local codes to remove implementation barriers, develop guidance, estimate economic benefits, and model the positive effects of incorporating green infrastructure into the urban landscape.

Outreach and Education Assistance

• The EPA’s green infrastructure webcast series features leading academics and professionals from around the country sharing expertise on a range of topics related to green infrastructure, including using green infrastructure practices to build climate resilience.
• The Campus RainWorks Challenge is also engaging American colleges and universities in a green infrastructure design competition that seeks to foster effective stormwater management and climate resilient practices. Students can create a design that explores how green infrastructure can be used to mitigate current and future climate hazards and form the basis for a campus climate response plan.

Financial Assistance

• The EPA’s Green Infrastructure website includes a diverse list of funding sources. Lack of funding is consistently cited as a barrier to the implementation of green infrastructure.

How This Program Helps Build Resilience

The EPA’s Green Infrastructure for Climate Resiliency webpage describes the many ways green infrastructure can help communities prepare for and manage climate change impacts. Communities can use green infrastructure to manage localized flooding by preserving land to reduce stormwater runoff and protect floodplains. Rain gardens and green streets help replenish local groundwater reserves that mitigate droughts. In urban areas, trees, green roofs, and vegetative cover can help reduce outside temperatures and the urban heat island effect by shading building surfaces and deflecting radiation from the sun. On the coast, native wetland plants and submerged aquatic vegetation minimize coastal damage and erosion.

Connections to Other EPA, Federal, or Non-Governmental Efforts

The Green Infrastructure Program is responsible for coordinating and promoting green infrastructure across EPA’s Regional Offices, as well as other the EPA offices and programs including the Stormwater Permitting Program, the Combined Sewer System Program, the Nonpoint Source Program, the Office of Community Revitalization, the Office of Research and Development (ORD), and the Office of Air and Radiation.

The Green Infrastructure Program also regularly collaborates with other federal agencies including the National Park Service, Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Interior, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Department of Transportation. Each federal agency offers unique expertise and resources that can be harnessed to help communities plan for, design, and implement green infrastructure. In May of 2021, the EPA re-launched the Green Infrastructure Federal Collaborative. This cooperative effort fosters engagement and cooperation between agencies that actively work to promote the implementation of green infrastructure.

Other Partners

The Green Infrastructure Program also collaborates externally with municipal green infrastructure leaders, local governments, Tribal communities, states, trade groups, the private sector, and the public to encourage the use of green infrastructure.