Coordinates: 40°45′29″N 73°59′02″W / 40.758°N 73.984°W
The Staten Island Bluebelt (also known simply as Bluebelt), is a very large scale system of stormwater best management practices (BMPs) that includes structural and nonstructural stormwater management control measures taken to mitigate changes to both quantity and quality of runoff caused through changes to land use.
The Bluebelt is an award-winning and unique project that has been under active construction on Staten Island, New York, since the early 1990s.
The Bluebelt program was initiated in the late 1980s by New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of City Planning, based on a suggestion made several decades earlier by Ian McHarg, a landscape architect. Acquisition of land began in 1991 for the project, one of the Northeast United States’ most ambitious stormwater management efforts. The overall goal is to provide the necessary stormwater drainage infrastructure for a 12,000-acre (49 km2) region on the southern end of the island while at the same time preserving the last great stand of freshwater wetlands in New York City. The bluebelt uses a series of carefully placed BMPs at the storm sewer/wetland interface to reduce flooding and improve water quality. Creation of a self-regulating ecosystem that is native to the Staten Island region is of primary importance to the program.