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“The CAVI vision for Vancouver Island is catching on. There is increasing interest,” stated John Finnie. “We believe a key to the success of CAVI is that we are talking to people, not preaching at them. Our approach is to inform and educate. We do this by creating situations for people to have conversations. The CAVI role is to plant seeds and start the conversations that will lead to action. We are encouraging people to move from conversations to dialogue, and to learn from the experience of each other.”

“Surrey has established a new sustainability benchmark in Canada with a state of the art facility that converts organic waste into renewable energy,” said Mayor Linda Hepner. “The Biofuel Facility will be instrumental in reducing community-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by approximately 49,000 tonnes per year, which is the equivalent of taking over 10,000 cars off the road annually.”

“Among land and drainage practitioners, how water gets to a stream and how long it takes is not well understood. Unintended consequences of this failure to ‘get it right’ include degraded urban streams, more flooding, more stream erosion, less streamflow when needed most, and an unfunded infrastructure liability,” states Kim Stephens. “In 2006, American engineer and textbook author Andy Reese coined the term voodoo hydrology to both describe drainage practice and draw attention to the need for changing the way drainage engineers practice their trade.”

In 2007, Rob Lawrance set the context and introduced the unifying themes for the three City of Nanaimo presentations. In setting the context, he also elaborated on what is involved in finding the right ‘balance’ to make things happen on the ground. “It’s all about people, and most of all, it’s about involving the right people at the start,” stated Rob Lawrance. He identified four tools that are enabling City staff to drive green infrastructure innovation in Nanaimo.

“The partnership brings together core groups, all with a strong commitment individually and collectively to asset management,” stated Wally Wells. “Over several years, the knowledge base of asset management increased and was shared primarily through Asset Management BC (AM BC), including the development of tools and offering training programs. As asset management became a requirement in funding programs, AM BC became the focus for information including the core BC document ‘Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework’. “