GETTING GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE BUILT: City of Surrey hosts Metro Vancouver Water Balance Model Forum on March 12, 2009
Convening for Action in Metro Vancouver
How do we simultaneously work together as staff within a municipality and as a region AND externally with developers and other private sector players, to ensure we implement sustainable approaches to development?
The foregoing problem statement provides a frame-of-reference for the Metro Vancouver Water Balance Model Forum on March 12, 2009. Hosted by the City of Surrey, this learning event is co-sponsored by the Water Balance Model Inter-Governmental Partnership and the Green Infrastructure Partnership.
For a program overview, click on Living Water Smart & Making Green Choices to Create Liveable Communities & Protect Stream Health.
Shared Responsibilities
“The Forum is designed to start a dialogue between policy-makers and project implementers,” states Vincent Lalonde, the City’s General Manager, Engineering. “We are approaching the program design from a shared responsibility perspective; we will explore how policy and legal tools can help developers, regulators and designers collaborate to ensure responsible outcomes.”
What Tools Work
“Looking ahead to March 12, we are in the process of framing a Responsibility Matrix that regulators, developers and designers will be able to use as a decision support tool,” states Susan Rutherford, who represents West Coast Environmental Law on the Green Infrastructure Partnership Steering Committee. “The Forum is an opportunity for people with different perspectives to talk candidly to each other about green infrastructure implementation.”
To Learn More:
To download a story that elaborates on how the Forum will approach the responsibility theme, click on Making Green Choices: Opportunities for Law and Policy to Effect Change on the Ground.
Posted February 2009