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“A distinguishing feature of the Penticton Forum will be the audience interaction segment that is part of each module. We are characterizing them as Town Hall Sharing Sessions to underscore that we are going beyond question and answer segments,” stated Ron Smith. “Each Town Hall segment will be preceded by context presentations that are intended to inform and stimulate.”

The purpose of the forum is to showcase how partnerships, collaboration, innovation and integration are helping local governments in three regions make the best choices for sustainable, healthy and vibrant communities. “The Water Sustainability Action Plan provides local governments and practitioners with the tools and experience to better manage land and water resources,” states Ted van der Gulik.

“The Forum showcased how partnerships, collaboration, innovation, and integration are helping local governments in three regions make the best choices for sustainable, healthy and vibrant communities,” reported Kim Stephens. “The story of the Forum is told in a series of six stories published weekly on the Waterbucket website. These describe the elements of the Forum program, and are consolidated in a stand-alone document.

How do staff within a municipality and a region work together AND externally with the stewardship sector, developers and other private sector players, to ensure we implement sustainable approaches to development? “We are NOT saying that every community must follow the same formula; what we are saying is that everyone needs to agree on expectations
and how all the players….regulators, developers, designers, etc….will work together, and after that each community can reach its goals in its own way,” stated Eric Bonham.

“The Green Infrastructure Partnership is promoting use of a ‘green' vocabulary that reflects an understanding of the relationship between land and water,” stated Paul Ham, Chair.

“It is the telling of the story about an event that takes on importance in moving practitioners from talk to action. A key is that those who were there come away inspired and start doing things differently in their day jobs as a result of what they learned by being part of the moment,” stated Kim Stephens.

”In BC, the approach that we are taking is to set the goal. As a result, we are seeing people in local governments leapfrogging each other to see how close they can get to the goal,” stated Chris Jensen.

“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,” concluded Corino Salomi.

“Beyond the Guidebook takes the Stormwater Planning Guidebook to the next level of evolution. To help engineers in particular, we have developed an analytical methodology that connects source control evaluation with stream health assessment,” stated Jim Dumont. “Through implementation of “green infrastructure” policies and practices, the desired outcome in going Beyond the Guidebook is to apply what we have learned at the site scale over the past five years.”

“The seminar is the next step in the rollout of ‘Beyond the Guidebook: Context for Rainwater Management and Green Infrastructure in British Columbia’. This guidance document was released in June 2007,” stated Paul Ham. “The purpose of the Beyond the Guidebook initiative is to to help local governments achieve desired urban stream health and environmental protection outcomes at a watershed scale.”