As I watched the wall of water fall from the sky on Saturday,  I couldn’t help but think that the millions of dollars in flooding damage could have been prevented if Boston was more progressive about green planning and building initatives, such as pervious pavements and green roofs. 

This was the perfect storm for testing the buffering capacity of these technologies.  As opposed to all of that water running off along pavement and roof surfaces and collecting in low lying areas, pervious pavements and green roofs would have allowed much of the water to percolate slowly into the soil.   These technologies are initially an expensive investment, which makes many people skeptical of the value of these investments (myself included).  But with the damage from storms like these in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, it may pay off in the long run.