Throwing the baby out with the storm water

Anyone who lives in an Australian city knows the pattern: when Summer hits, city parks dry up, the grass withers and water restrictions are enforced by zealous neighbours who frown over the fence as you reach for the hose. Then there's a downpour, the street floods and all that desperately needed water flushes down the drain and into the nearest creek. We've come to accept this boom-and-bust nature of water management and probably assume our water courses benefit from the sudden flows of additional water. But what if that assumption were wrong? What if water gushing out of a drain is actually damaging the rivers and creeks? This week, a storm-water industry conference in Sydney discussed the impact of free-flowing city drains. And one of the speakers argued that the only good storm water is harvested storm water. And most of it should be put back into the ground where it belongs.  http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s2527215.htm 

The video below shows how the rain runs from my balcony, down the gutters, into the drains, then into Flat Rock Gully.