Effective Municipal Rainwater/Stormwater Management that Achieves Watershed 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.
Furthermore, a rainwater/stormwater component is a requirement for approved Liquid Waste Management Plans (LWMPs). Guidelines for developing a LWMP were first published in 1992. LWMPs are created by local governments through a public process in cooperation with the Province. The purposes of a LWMP are to minimize the environmental impacts of an Official Community Plan and ensure that land development is consistent with Provincial objectives.
The current Liquid Waste Management Plan for the Metro Vancouver region was approved in 2002 and is to be updated every five years. Updating the Plan offers the opportunity to consider past progress and include actions to address new issues and opportunities. In January 2008, the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee released a Discussion Document titled Strategy for Updating the Liquid Waste Management Plan .
Create Liveable Communities & Protect Stream Health
The Green Infrastructure Partnership has prepared a Commentary to assist the LWMP Review Team in moving forward with the Rainwater/Stormwater Component of the updated LWMP. The Commentary portrays the progress that has been made in the Metro Vancouver region since 2001. It also reflects green infrastructure expectations and emerging senior government policy direction as articulated in recent co-presentations by representatives of the federal Department of Fisheries & Oceans and the provincial Ministry of Community Services.
In preparing the Commentary, the Green Infrastructure Partnership has brought to the forefront the story of the leadership role that the Metro Vancouver Stormwater Interagency Liaison Group has played over the past decade in building the technical foundation for Beyond the Guidebook: The New Business As Usual, a provincial initiative. The Commentary identifies specific actions and commitments for 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 make the LWMP Update bold and new.”
To download a copy of the Commentary, please click on this link to Effective Municipal Rainwater/Stormwater Management that Achieves Watershed Health.
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.
Posted March 2008