Older communities, long regarded as blighted and polluted, are beginning to change that image by ripping up some of their asphalt and concrete and giving the land a chance to breathe again.

 Little Edmonston, a working-class bedroom community on the outskirts of the nation's capital is the latest example of this greening of urban America. I wrote about the Prince George's County town's "Green Street" project in The Baltimore Sun today.  In this picture, the town's mayor, Adam Ortiz, shows how the community's busy main thoroughfare, Decatur Street, is being narrowed to make room for "bio-retention cells," aka trees and grasses to soak up polluted stormwater running off the streets and parking areas.  Standing behind him is Neil Weinstein, executive director of the Low Impact Development Center, which has been assisting the town with the project.

Besides soaking up damaging runoff, the native trees to be planted in the new strips between sidewalk and street also will help clear the air and provide shade and bird habitat. New, energy-efficient street lamps and bike lanes on porous pavers  will add to the makeover.

The construction is financed with a $1.1 million economic stimulus grant - one of seven "green" infrastructure projects in Maryland receiving a total of $3 million in funding through the Recovery Act. But the Edmonston project couldn't have been "shovel ready" without the assistance of a $25,000 design and engineering grant the year before from the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Such retrofitting of older communities is vital, because most of them were built before anyone recognized that funneling rain water quickly from streets and parking lots into storm drains would ravage streams and pollute the Chesapeake Bay.  Baltimore and other cities and towns are beginning to grapple with how to do what little Edmonston is doing, but on a massive scale.  The cost is likely to run into billions of dollars, but Weinstein, who's also signed on to help Baltimore with its retrofits, says people need to start thinking of it more as an investment than a cost - an investment in cleaner water and more attractive neighborhoods.