Green Infrastructure

Langley’s approach to achieving water balance through green Infrastructure evolved as successive neighbourhoods were built over the past two decades. In the beginning, the focus for Green Infrastructure was on what could be achieved within greenways. Langley staff then turned their attention to rain gardens. Building on their history of successes, their next evolution was implementation of “blue links”, which is another name for rain gardens. The blue link is symbolic of the transformational change which has taken root in the Township in the 21st century as designing with nature became the ‘new normal’.

“The term deep knowledge is generally referring to the effective sharing of knowledge that has been informed by a lot of experience. Thus, a work environment that encourages exploring and adapting to new knowledge as well as sharing senior knowledge and learned experience will generate better problem solvers and decisions. A balanced method to form institutional knowledge will draw benefit from the knowledge and experience of senior staff without discounting the contribution of new ideas, approaches, and information,” wrote Bernadette O’Connor.

“Organizational and intergenerational amnesia is real and has a downside. It results in unintended consequences. Superficial understandings do not yield solutions to complex problems. One needs deep knowledge. The ramifications of amnesia are cause for concern in an era when systems of all kinds are being subjected to repeated shocks that test their resiliency. At the same time, councils and boards are grappling with top-down decisions or directives by senior governments. But how effective can they be when knowledge transfer in local government is broken?” asked Kim Stephens.

“There are two young fish swimming along who happen to meet an older fish. The older fish nods at them and says: ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and asks: ‘What the hell is water?’ The story also begs the question, what makes the older fish so much wiser? We must infer that it is his experience. That is, the older fish only knows about water because he’s been either outside the fishbowl or in many different fishbowls,” wrote Christina Benty.

“The District of Saanich 2019-2023 Strategic Plan included the development of an asset management strategy. The team now has a Council approved road map for the next five years on our journey towards sustainable service delivery. Implementation of the plan will advance Saanich’s Asset Management practices in each of the four core elements of the Asset Management BC framework (assets, information, finances and people), and will result in completion of Saanich’s first-generation Asset Management Plans by 2027.

“In my work, I continue to apply the ten principles that I developed at Coquitlam when we delivered nine Integrated Watershed Management Plans in just 10 years. Three of the 10 are universally applicable to any area of infrastructure planning: take action, start small, stay practical. Staying true to these has helped me deliver so much. Develop a really good strategy coming out of the gate and stay super focused. Do not go down rabbit holes. You can always circle back later. Rather than just diving in, start with getting the lessons learned from what others have tried first,” stated Melony Burton.

“Because nature is a system, you cannot slice and dice it. EAP recognizes this and is a financial tool to give streams the support they need to survive. EAP provides a value picture of a stream system as a land use. How are Blue Ecology and EAP interconnected? Blue Ecology emphasizes the social perspective for protecting watersheds and streams. EAP shows how to achieve that outcome. EAP builds on the ‘big idea’ that use and conservation of land are equal values. Where Blue Ecology and EAP come together is in recognizing the importance of water and ecological assets in those two contexts,” stated Tim Pringle.

“The notion of a superficial understanding explains the challenge that I am seeing. There are post-2000 graduate engineers coming out of university who are familiar with green infrastructure ideas and concepts, but they do not know the details behind them: details that they did not have to know at university or in their previous jobs. Sure, they understand rainwater management ideas and concepts at a high level. But without the background and history, can they really appreciate why certain targets and approaches were selected while others were not?” stated Robert Hicks.

Jody Watson provided inspirational leadership as chair of the Bowker Creek Initiative (BCI) for 13 years from 2005 through 2018. Without determined champions, nothing gets started and nothing happens. Champions motivate others. “The BCI represents an extensive network that includes three Councils, every department, 11 community associations, and the CRD too. We have spent 20 years of trust-building, of credibility-building. All that is part of collaboration, and that is what makes collaboration work. We had little successes and we had big successes,” stated Jody Watson

By the late 2000s, Surrey was poised to move beyond pilot projects to a broader watershed-based objectives approach. And they did as of 2008 when Council passed am enabling bylaw. From that bold leap forward emerged the framework for Surrey’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy. The genesis for the strategy was the green solutions concept in the Fergus Creek plan. The innovation in the Fergus Creek plan flowed from collaboration between Surrey engineering and planning staff and with Jim Dumont, a water resource innovator and thought leader.