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BC Water Sustainability Action Plan

    REIMAGINE URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE AS AN ECOSYSTEM: “My research is the first systematic review of the use and definition of the green infrastructure concept in local government plans in the United States,” stated Zbigniew Grabowski, principal author of ‘What is green infrastructure? A study of definitions in US city planning’


    “Many plans fail to explicitly define green infrastructure. How it is defined guides the types of projects that local governments implement, with enduring impacts to people and the urban environment. Ecology is not really being embedded in any planning practice. This realization turned my attention towards this question…how do you embed ecosystem science and principles within landscape planning to conserve landscapes, ecological functions, and quality? My work is about a new paradigm that moves away from humans as separate from nature,” stated Zbigniew Grabowski.

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    CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART B:“Despite the population density that we have had to accommodate, and the ongoing growth due to the demand for housing, we have to set land aside for community livability,” stated Rémi Dubé, former Director of the City of Surrey’s Building Division


    The intergenerational nature of drainage experience and evolution in Surrey is unique in the Metro Vancouver region. The city had a 25-yr head start on other BC municipalities. And there has been staff continuity over a 50-yr period. By 2009, Surrey had evolved from pilot projects to setting watershed-based objectives and targets. “The Biodiversity Development Cost Charge Bylaw for acquiring and enhancing land in stream corridors has been in place since 2019. Surrey is the only municipality that has one. The work to create the DCC was initiated many years before,” stated Rémi Dubé.

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    HISTORY OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “One of the great failures of my generation is that we did not teach the next generation about world history. They take the world as it is right now for granted,” stated Thomas Friedman, legendary foreign affairs commentator


    In British Columbia, the success of the waterbucket.ca website for the past 20 years is that it records history in the making while providing a platform for individuals and groups to share their success stories. Otherwise, with the passage of time, people either forget about or never knew what previous generations were trying to do and why. A recent observation by Thomas Friedman is a reminder of the importance, relevance and power of storytelling. “It has been a real failure of education to bring along generations X, Y and Z to appreciate what is being lost right now.”

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    STORYTELLING PLATFORM FOR ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACH TO LAND AND WATER USE: “Success stories on waterbucket.ca profile and validate those who do good work in the spirit of Living Water Smart,” stated Mike Tanner, founding chair of the intergovernmental waterbucket.ca partnership


    “In 2004, we brought together an intergovernmental partnership to fund development of the waterbucket.ca website. Launched 12 months later in 2005, waterbucket.ca has matured into a legacy resource. It has become the place where people go to look for information on water in BC. It is a powerful communication platform because we provide an independent voice for peer-based learning. We are getting the stories of the Living Water Smart champions out there. When people say I saw it on waterbucket.ca, that is our ultimate measure and testament of success,” stated Mike Tanner.

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    CHAMPION FOR AN ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACH: “One of the real advantages we had at UniverCity is that I was able to try out new ideas. Part of the appeal was that I have always been interested in innovations,” stated Michael Geller, the CEO who overcame fear and doubt to build a community atop Burnaby Mountain (2nd in a series)


    “Even before I started, I got a call from Don Stenson who was then Director of Planning at the City of Burnaby. He asked me to come to his office and said something that I have never forgotten. He said there is one thing that I want you to never forget… STORMWATER. Whatever you build on top of that mountain, the stormwater flows into Stoney Creek must be no worse than they are today. That is why Kim Stephens could do whatever he wanted because protecting Stoney Creek from stormwater impacts was THE most important thing that I could do,” recalled Michael Geller.

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    CHAMPION FOR AN ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACH: “Technical people have to demonstrate cost-effectiveness in order to transform political acceptability into political will to implement change and spend money,” stated Barry Janyk, former 4-term mayor of Gibsons (1st in a series)


    The context for the Partnership for Water Sustainability celebrating the life of Barry Janyk is the Smartstorm Forum Series. This transformational series fueled a movement and galvanized an ecosystem-based approach to rainwater management and green infrastructure within the Georgia Basin bioregion of southwestern British Columbia. Barry Janyk, who was then mayor of Gibsons, infused the SmartStorm Forum Series with his passion. He was the political champion who carried the green infrastructure torch to the Metro Vancouver Regional Board and then to UBCM.

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    METRO VANCOUVER LEGACY RESEARCH; BENCHMARK FOR WATERSHED HEALTH: “When local governments obtain a financial value for streams as spatial assets, they can include them in their asset management plans and budgets,” stated Tim Pringle, Adjunct Faculty with the Master of Community Planning Department at Vancouver Island University


    “Context is everything. In 1999, the science was brand new and the Streamside Protection Regulation was still two years away from becoming law. This context underscores just how far ahead of the game that Metro Vancouver was with its watershed health rating system. This is context for Metro Vancouver coming full circle to build on seminal applied research undertaken in the Metro Vancouver and Puget Sound regions in the late 1990s.This legacy work provides us with a benchmark for comparison of watershed health assessments then and now,” stated Tim Pringle.

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    CHRONICLE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION IN METRO VANCOUVER – PART A: “Each time we face an environmental challenge, we are once again looking at how we do business. A changing context causes us to ask important questions about how we might do things better,” stated Dale Wall, retired Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs


    “In the 1990s, very careful work by the likes of Parliamentary Secretary Joan Sawicki and Erik Karlsen created the foundation by which we could move forward with development of regional growth strategies and then implementation. It required huge amounts of work by people like Darlene Marzari when she was Minister of Municipal Affairs to build a consensus among local elected officials in terms of what a regional growth strategy might look like. That work changed, in many ways, the context. We had people in local government who were keen on doing this,” stated Dale Wall.

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    OVERCOMING FEAR AND DOUBT TO BUILD A COMMUNITY ATOP BURNABY MOUNTAIN: “UniverCity proved to be a rare opportunity to demonstrate how a new, sustainable community can truly integrate stormwater management into urban design, starting where the rainfall lands,” stated Michael Geller, founding president and CEO of the SFU Community Trust


    “Not everyone gets to plan a brand-new community on top of a mountain as I did at Simon Fraser University. To everybody embarking on these gentle densification projects to construct 4 or 6 homes on single-family lots, you must get the drainage right. Get it wrong and it can be expensive to fix the problem,” stated Michael Geller. “One of the real advantages we had at UniverCity is that I was able to try out new ideas. Whenever people would say, we cannot do that, I could say: I will give you written assurance from the university that if this idea does not work, we will fix it.”

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    NATURE-FIRST CITIES AND URBAN ECOSYSTEM-BASED PLANNING: “Nature-First Cities is not a heavy academic book. We wrote it to be inspirational. We challenge readers to understand why we have become so disconnected from nature and what happens when we start to rebuild that connection,” stated SFU Professor Sean Markey


    “Nature belongs in cities, but how do we put nature first without pushing people aside? Nature-First Cities reveals the false dichotomy of that question by recognizing that people and nature are indivisible. What are the costs associated with having cities that are not nature-based? What are the benefits if we invite nature back into our cities? What would it take to actually do this? If we are to challenge how urban development has taken place without a deep understanding of our connection to nature, what is a strategy for bringing nature back into cities,” stated Sean Markey.

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