Ditches to Swales

Changing dangerous places to walk, into walkable surfaces.

Would you like to see ditches* like this

Ditch at SW45th and Hamilton. Photo by Victor von Salza
Ditch along SW45th and Hamilton. Photo by Victor von Salza

which forces pedestrians onto roadway shoulder, turned into a walkable swale like this

Greenswale model by Greg Schifsky. Photo by Victor von Salza
Model by Greg Schifsky. Photo by Victor von Salza

where one could walk or wait more safely for the bus, while at the same time allowing for drainage of the street?

A recently converted ditch on SW Hamilton just west of SW 42 Pl. Photo by Victor von Salza
A recently converted ditch on SW Hamilton just west of SW 42 Pl. Photo by Victor von Salza

In the near term the Bureau of Environmental Services(BES) Ditches to Swales program has identified and put SW Shattuck, SW Hamilton, and SW Dosch on the top of their project list. E.g. if the ditch along the west side of SW Shattuck were converted to a walkable swale, there would be a walkable surface 2-3 feet wide along most of the length of SW Shattuck!

BES is holding off on SW Hamilton in order to coordinate with the SW Hamilton Halo LID project.

• Friday November 9th, 2007 D2S is "still waiting on funding decisions on our CIP project, of which ditch-to-swales is one component. Second, we do not yet have a BES engineer/designer assigned to the ditch-to-swale project. Since our field visit would focus on site-specific and designed related points, we want to have the designer present to hear everyone's questions and comments. We will schedule a meeting/field visit as soon as we know more about funding and have an engineer assigned to the project."

• Tuesday November 13th, 2007 - "We expect to know more about funding and getting a BES engineer/designer assigned to ditch-to-swales within the next month. I will email everyone in early to mid December with another update." - Shannon Axtell, City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services, Watershed Services Group - Fanno/Tryon Team

• Read more about Ditches to Swales in these PDFs:
BES Ditch to Swale Report, 210 KB
BES Technical Memorandum: Ditch to Swale, 416 KB
11/13/2007 BES plans to update some of this information over the next month.

*Please note: Originally this concept was called Swales to Trails; but the current more correct terminology is now Ditches to Swales. In Greg's model/proposal pictured above the surface would be covered by some low growing "forbes" that would help filter the water even more, in the current BES implementation the top surface is consists of pedestrian friendly sized rock.