Green Infrastructure Partnership publishes Commentary on Effective Municipal Rainwater/Stormwater Management that Achieves Watershed Health
Create Liveable Communities & Protect Stream Health
In British Columbia, the Local Government Act vests the responsibility for drainage with municipalities, and British Columbia case law makes clear the responsibility of municipalities to manage runoff volume to prevent downstream impacts. An increasingly important corollary to that responsibility is the need to work from the regional down to the site scale, to maintain and advance watershed health to ensure that both water quantity and quality will be sustained to meet both ecosystem and human health needs.
The New Business As Usual
The Green Infrastructure Partnership has prepared a Commentary that reflects green infrastructure expectations and emerging senior government policy direction. The Commentary highlights the importance and relevance of Beyond the Guidebook: The New Business As Usual, a provincial initiative. The Commentary identifies specific actions and commitments for greening the built environment and protecting watershed health by means of affordable and effective performance targets.
“We have emphasized the connections surrounding ‘why we do it’ – watershed health and all that entails (quantity and quality) and the need for drainage actions to 
be integrated with all of the other policy and actions, to truly be effective – that is, thinking and integrating regionally down to the site scale”, states Susan Rutherford, speaking on behalf of the Green Infrastructure Partnership, “We believe it is the emphasis on the importance of this integration, and on water quantity and quality, that will result in doing business differently in British Columbia.”
To Learn More:
To download a copy of the Commentary, please click on this link to Effective Municipal Rainwater/Stormwater Management that Achieves Watershed Health.
About the Green Infrastructure Partnership
The Green Infrastructure Partnership was formed in 2003 and is a consortium of four organizations. Under the umbrella of the Water Sustainability Action Plan, the mission of the Green Infrastructure Partnership is to facilitate implementation of design with nature infrastructure practices and regulation province-wide. If we design with nature, then the water balance can be maintained or even restored over time.
