Moving Beyond Pilot Projects in Metro Vancouver: To get to the big picture, it starts with the smallest pieces
Moving Beyond Pilot Projects
Hosted by the City of Surrey, the Metro Vancouver Water Balance Model Forum attracted an audience of 90-plus on March 12, 2009. The Forum program was built around the HOW question as it pertains to green infrastructure:
- HOW will the City of Surrey get it built right;
- HOW will a consistent regional approach be achieved in Metro Vancouver?
The Forum was co-sponsored by the Water Balance Model Inter-Governmental Partnership and the Green Infrastructure Partnership, with a goal of moving beyond pilot projects to a watershed-based approach to achieving performance targets for rainwater management and green infrastructure.
For the complete story on the Forum as posted on the Convening for Action Community-of-Interest, click on Convening for Action in Metro Vancouver: Moving Beyond Pilot Projects to a Broader Watersheds Objectives Approach.
Key Messages
The Forum was undertaken as part of the implementation program for Convening for Action in British Columbia in order to promote alignment of local actions in Metro Vancouver with provincial goals as stated in Living Water Smart, BC’s Water Plan. The following challenge statement provided a frame-of-reference for advancing a consistent ‘regional team approach’ 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?
To download a document that provides a concise synopsis of the Forum, including Key Messages, click on Metro Vancouver Water Balance Model Forum: Moving Beyond Pilot Projects to a Broader Watersheds Objectives Approach. This summary document is complete with a joint statement by Vincent Lalonde, Raymond Fung and Ted van der Gulik, the leaders of the three sponsoring entities. Their joint statement is reproduced below.
Joint Statement by the Sponsors
“To get to the big picture, it starts with the smallest pieces. For this reason, the Surrey Forum is advancing a regional team approach that aligns local actions with provincial policy goals as articulated in the Living Water Smart and the Green Communities initiatives Making this happen requires partnerships, collaboration, innovation and integration.
We see the Forum as providing an opportunity to generate positive energy in the region. In particular, the Forum will inform the actions identified in the rainwater/stormwater component of Metro Vancouver’s updated Liquid Waste Management Plan. We believe this is where the opportunity for implementing a regional team approach resides.
We anticipate that the Forum sharing sessions will show that there are solutions if people talk to each other about what they each could do differently. This will help all parties collaborate to more effectively fulfil their piece of the sustainable development puzzle.
Once we know what we want our watersheds and neighbourhoods to look like, the next step is to decide what the tools are that will get us there. All of us ….whether we are regulators, developers or designers ….need to understand and care about the goal if we are to create the future that we all want.”
Links to YouTube Videos:
To hear what Vincent Lalonde and Ted van der Gulik had to say in their opening remarks at the Forum, click on Vincent Lalonde tells the City’s story and Ted van der Gulik explains why an Inter-Governmental Partnership to access the videos posted on YouTube. Each is 6-minutes in duration.
Posted March 2009