By Matt Sepic, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – To mark Earth Day on Tuesday public officials, civil engineers, and environmental experts gathered at the Missouri Botanical Garden to discuss clean water initiatives.
Botanical Garden director Peter Raven says careful management of the St. Louis area's rivers and streams is vital to maintaining clean water sources.
"Ultimately, the long term problem is where do we get our water from?" Raven said. "And we're going to have to consider carefully how we're going to construct
our water supplies for the next hundred years and beyond that if we want
people here to be as blessed with it as we are."
Using water-absorbing pavement in parking lots is one way some cities are attempting to reduce flooding and keep polluted rainwater out of waterways.