This is absolutely incredible: Someone has said something intelligent about the weather we're having! A Seattle architect (I can't figure out exactly who) from Johnston Architects ("An outlet for news and ideas from the Seattle-based Architecture firm") wrote this post, reproduced almost in its entirety below:

But the real problem with rain in Southern California is the drainage. Like I said, it rains very rarely, but when it does the volume is incredible. For some reason, the urban planners who built this area decided to largely neglect these rains, probably figuring that people could deal for a day or two. Los Angeles is a city known for it’s pavement, which is quite impermeable and facilitates massive runoff during storms. Claremont (and, I assume, the rest of SoCal) is no different. The result is that when it rains, the few storm drains drilled into the sides of the streets are completely inadequate, and the roads turn to rivers.

I wish I had photos to show but I don’t have a camera down here, so a description will have to do. There’s one street in particular, College Way, that becomes inundated during storms. It’s a central street that you pretty much have to cross to get from the dorms to the academic buildings. Because the Claremont Colleges are built on a slight grade and Pomona is at the bottom, the rain accumulates as it cascades down the impermeable, drainage-free roads and parking lots. By the time it reaches College it’s two or three inches deep in the gutters, rushing by like a channeled stream. Roads are built convex so that the runoff like this accumulates at the sides so it won’t inconvenience cars, so the difficulty lies in getting to and from the middle of the road.

The first day I had to cross these rapids, I tried to jump to the shallow center, but misjudged the depth. As soon as I landed in the half-inch, flowing water, it swept up around my feet and drenched my shoes and socks.  Feet wet, I trudged on to my class, trying to figure out a better way to get around. The next day I went out of my way to walk down to the intersection where College runs into 6th Street, in the hopes that crossing would be easier. It wasn’t, and I again essentially waded across the street.

The frustrating part of all of this is that storm water runoff is a relatively easy problem to address, at least in the design stage.  The more permeable an area is, the less runoff there is to begin with.  This can be accomplished with permeable concrete, concrete pavers, and simply the elimination of unnecessary pavement in parking lots and around sidewalks. Additionally, landscape planters and swales – small plantings that absorb runoff into the ground – can be installed on and around streets with high runoff volumes.  Portland is one of many cities that has begun to implement this kind of stormwater management strategy.  Read about how successful they’ve been here.

I don’t expect the City of Claremont to take any real action regarding stormwater runoff, because it just isn’t a priority down here.  This is the kind of thing though, that needs to be included in future developments.  It has little upfront cost, and huge environmental and social benefits down the road. I think the biggest lesson to take from this, however, is the importance of fully understanding the environment you’re building in.  It only rains in Claremont a few days per year, but it was a mistake to ignore the rain altogether.  By comprehensively analyzing the spaces we’re modifying before the design process, we can take a more complete, efficient, and desirable approach to development.