Water - Tomorrow's "gold" - Rethinking what we do with it while it's in the City

A traffic circle in Normal, IL has been voted the #1 public space in the U.S. It's of course not just your normal traffic circle; it's also a water recycling system and a park.

Flooding along Lick Creek put storm water run-off and retention basins on the front page in Memphis and in the city budget. Retention basins, like the new one under a University of Memphis parking lot on Central Avenue and the one proposed for Overton Square, are being built to slow the run-off down and help reduce flooding.

Around the country, engineers and designers are also working on "bioretention cells" and rain gardens -- sustainable solutions that absorb, filter, recycle and clean the water through collections of plants. That's what Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects did at the traffic circle in Normal. Take a look.

An idea for storm water before it hits our harbors and the River?