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The Stormwater Utility provides the City with the capability to influence landowner actions on the ground for the common good. “The utility is both an equitable and proportionate billing system. It also builds awareness of how to reduce our environmental and utility impact and find ways to incentivise more sustainable choices for water management,” stated Fraser Work. “Building climate change resilience is the responsibility of everyone!”

“We have applied this whole systems concept to develop our strategy for watershed retrofit and rehabilitation. Now it is a matter of wait and see in order to be able to show the positive effects of the retrofit program,” stated Chris May. “Everyone wants instant gratification, but realizing the benefits takes time. It took 100 years to get here. It will take 100 years to turn the situation around. The initial signs are good. The monitoring shows that Kitsap County may be ‘holding the line’.”

“Our vision is to provide world-class stormwater drainage services enabling the sustainable development of Hong Kong. During the implementation of our projects, we take into consideration various factors, including ecology conservation,” stated Edward Tong. “Based on the sustainability principle, Blue-Green Infrastructure enhances the community’s living environment and maintains Hong Kong as a liveable city ‘for you and me’.”

“Design firm Arup just published a study on the benefits of plant-covered buildings – some of which are so green they look like they’ve been deserted by humans and are slowly being reclaimed by nature – and they found the benefits go way beyond just sucking up CO2 and looking pretty,” wrote David Nield. “The company’s engineers took a variety of measurements in five cities to see what impact extra greenery could have.”

Andrew Reese sees stormwater management going “back to the future” faster than a 1982 DeLorean with a “flux capacitor.” Even if you don’t get his clever reference to the Steven Spielberg movie, it suffices to say: Big changes are coming out when it comes to regulating pollutants in stormwater. And, it turns out, mimicking nature with green infrastructure can provide a reliable means of meeting new standards.

“The sophistication of our land use and water use conversation is much higher in BC than in most other provinces. On a tiny, tiny little piece of BC, about two per cent, over 80 per cent of the people live and we grow over 80 per cent of our farm-gate receipts. That is such a high potential for conflict. The wonderful thing is that this also spurs the potential for doing things in new and very innovative ways,” stated Deborah Curran.

An innovative approach to valuing a community’s natural assets promises to reduce service delivery costs while increasing other public benefits. Councillor Jeremy Valeriote described how Gibsons is finding that their intact watershed, with its ponds, streams and deep aquifer, are immensely valuable as part of their drinking water and storm water management systems. Protecting the natural foreshore along their portion of the Salish Sea provides a natural barrier from the ocean, protecting homes and property.

“Surprisingly, there are very few peer-reviewed research papers that have evaluated Green Streets on a stormwater control and treatment basis. There are a couple of factors related to the lack of available datasets,” wrote Jonathan Page. “One factor is the ‘newness’ of the Green Streets and Green Infrastructure movement; another contributing factor is the difficulty in monitoring and instrumenting Green Street projects for research.”

Green infrastructure asset recognition issue is aimed at having green infrastructure formally recognised by Treasury as an asset class. According to Shahana McKenzie, “The big issue regarding funding green infrastructure is really about the source of the money and whether you can depreciate for an asset’s replacement or not. In local government there are a number of instances where landscape works are not able to be capitalised.”

“A spiral rain garden is the focal point of the park. Water that typically flows off the hillside is collected and treated through this facility. Then every half-hour, one cell of the three-cell spiral walls releases its water charge through rocks located on the sides of the figure. It then filters the water through the spiral, putting clean water back in to Puget Sound,” explained Andrew Nelson.