Moving Beyond Pilot Projects: Convening for Action in Metro Vancouver
On February 23, 2010, the Bowker Creek Forum will celebrate urban watershed management successes in the Georgia Basin, and will enable participants to share lessons learned and connect the dots between five Georgia Basin initiatives.
Leading up to the Forum, a set of four stories progressively foreshadow and/or elaborate on what will be covered at the Forum. These stories also serve as resource materials. To learn more, click on Set of “Forum Preview Stories” establish expectations for 2010 Bowker Creek Forum.
The following reflections by Rémi Dubé, Richard Boase and Ed von Euw are extracted from Story #2, and are abridged. To read their stories in full, click on Moving Beyond Pilot Projects: Convening for Action in Metro Vancouver in order to download a 2-page PDF document.
Outcome-Oriented Watershed Plans
The Metro Vancouver Regional Board is currently finalizing an Integrated Liquid Waste & Resource Management Plan. Comprehensive in scope, the Plan is aligned with Living Water Smart and other provincial initiatives. It also provides a framework for developing and implementing outcome-oriented watershed plans that have clear linkages with land use planning and development approval processes.
The City of Surrey and the District of North Vancouver are two outcome-oriented municipalities: Surrey is moving beyond pilot projects to a watershed objectives approach; and North Vancouver is in the process of developing implementation tools for an ‘urban landscape restoration strategy’.
Moving Beyond Pilot Projects in the City of Surrey
In March 2009, the Surrey Water Balance Model Forum introduced the notion of shared responsibility, and started a dialogue between policy-makers and project implementers about rainwater management and green infrastructure. The Forum provided the City with a platform to announce that it has moved beyond pilot 
projects to get green infrastructure built right.
“We are moving to a broader watershed objectives approach to capturing rain where it falls. Then we can better protect our streams,” states Rémi Dubé, Acting Development Services Manager with the City of Surrey.
Restoring the Urban Landscape in the District of North Vancouver
The District of North Vancouver has a bold vision to systematically retrofit individual properties as they come up for redevelopment. The catalyst for pending action is the current incremental impact of property redevelopment on stream health.
“The message for local governments is clear: single family properties hold the key to watershed health; we have to do a better job of educating residents 
about the link between their back yards and stream health; and we need to work directly with homeowners if we are to restore the rainfall capture capacity of the urban landscape,” states Richard Boase, Environmental Protection Officer (and Co-Chair of the Inter-Governmental Partnership that developed the Water Balance Model).
Metro Vancouver’s Integrated Liquid Waste & Resource Management Plan
“For the past decade, in Metro Vancouver we have been considering rainfall management rather than stormwater management. Rainwater falls on the site. 
If you manage it on site, then you don’t have stormwater runoff,” states Ed von Euw, Senior Engineer in the Policy and Planning Division. He has been responsible for development of Metro Vancouver's Integrated Liquid Waste & Resource Management Plan.
“Rainwater is so all-encompassing that it is actually included under all three of our goals…and several strategies.”
“Through the advisory Reference Panel process, Vancouver Island experience has informed and influenced elements of Metro Vancouver's updated plan, in particular those actions that will advance a regional team approach.”
Posted February 2010