Rollout of Beyond the Guidebook 2010 continues at "From Rain to Resource Workshop & Tradeshow" hosted by Okanagan Basin Water Board
“To help tell the stories of local governments that are convening for action to manage settlement change in balance with ecology, we posted a series of stories on Water Bucket during the August through October period. These preview stories foreshadowed what to expect at the workshop,” states Mike Tanner,
District of North Vancouver experience in applying the Water Balance Model to develop a watershed restoration vision
Richard Boase (120p) – September 2010
“We saw the Water Balance Model as an important tool that would help us to work within our developed community to restore function and value based on the premise that developed land can contribute to watershed restoration.”
East Clayton ‘Green’ Development in Surrey established BC precedent for implementing performance target approach to rainfall capture
“The Neighbourhood Concept Plan (NCP) established rainfall capture objectives to maintaining the predevelopment runoff rates and volumes. The clay soils and limited infiltration rates drove innovation in both the calculation methods and the design details to allow the volumetric runoff coefficient to be maintained in both single family and multi-family sites,” states Jim Dumont.
City of Surrey case study experience is genesis for Stream Health Methodology embedded in Water Balance Model
“The East Clayton development in Surrey was the first development in the Lower Mainland that utilized green infrastructure techniques and facilities. Looking back, application of the water balance methodology to East Clayton can now be seen as the genesis for the Stream Health Methodology that is embedded in the Water Balance Model powered by QUALHYMO,” reports Kim Stephens
District of North Vancouver experience in applying the Water Balance Model to develop a watershed restoration vision
“We saw the Water Balance Model as an important tool that would help us to work within our developed community to restore function and value based on the premise that developed land can contribute to watershed restoration,” said Richard Boase. “A key message from the District of North Vancouver experience is that Council is making informed decisions based on information derived from use of the Water Balance Model.”
New York City Reveals ‘Green’ Infrastructure Plans to Reduce Urban Runoff
New York City – Green Infastructure Plan – cover (360p)
The city's hybrid gray and green strategy would invest $US2.4 billion over 20 years to comply with new regulations. A critical goal is to manage runoff from 10% of the impervious surfaces in combined seweer watersheds through detention and infiltration source controls.
Bigger Pipes or Greener Communities: A Hydrological Assessment of using Low Impact Development to Mitigate Future Flooding
“Climate change significantly raises the risk of rain-generated floods and infrastructure failure. To maintain current levels of service, drainage infrastructure will need to be modified and upgraded. A key challenge is that for many communities, it will be prohibitively costly to rely on conventional engineered solutions,” states Chris Jensen.
Home Depot Demonstrates Rainwater Management Innovation in the City of Courtenay
“The City required that post-development rainwater flows leaving the site were equal to or less than the pre-development flows. For this property that was effectively zero. Home Depot established a BC precedent when it implemented a deep deep-well system for injecting rainwater runoff into the underlying aquifer,” stated Kevin Lagan.
A crucially important message in Beyond the Guidebook 2010: "We now have the tools and experience to design with nature"
“So many in local government are searching for the magical ‘silver bullet’to resolve watershed issues and challenges. Yet soil, vegetation and trees can do more for our watersheds than decades of planning, consulting and complicated engineering design will ever achieve,” states Richard Boase.
Application of the "DFO Urban Stormwater Guidelines" has evolved over the past decade to protect stream health
“While we need to have volume reduction targets, at the end of the day it is how effectively we apply the suite of available rainwater management tools that will ultimately determine whether we will succeed in protecting stream health at a watershed scale,” stated Corino Salomi. “The objective of protecting stream health is broader than how much volume one can infiltrate on a particular development.”