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Carrie Baron

    FOCUS ON THE HEALTH OF STREAM CORRIDORS: “There is a need for a new approach to hydrologic design, Jim Dumont advocated in the mid-2000s. So, Fergus Creek became the pilot,” stated Rémi Dubé, former Drainage Planning Manager with the City of Surrey


    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.

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    DESIGN WITH NATURE TO CREATE LIVEABLE COMMUNITIES AND PROTECT STREAM HEALTH: “My thinking about neighbourhood concept planning has been shaped by the look-and-feel of East Clayton as it was built compared to what we envisioned with the lofty goals for a sustainable community,” stated Rémi Dubé, a longtime green infrastructure champion and innovator with the City of Surrey


    “In the 2000s, Fergus Creek was the first of the new generation of watershed plans in the City of Surrey. We wanted a plan that would actually facilitate changes in how land is developed. In other words, what the watershed will look like in future should drive the approach to rainwater management. The Fergus Creek plan introduced the vision for implementing green solutions as the alternative to conventional engineered blue solutions. And it seeded the two ideas that became Surrey’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Biodiversity DCC,” stated Rémi Dubé.

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    DESIGN WITH NATURE TO CREATE LIVEABLE COMMUNITIES AND PROTECT STREAM HEALTH: “The lucky part in Surrey was that the people who set the green infrastructure groundwork at the lower levels all advanced to senior levels where their duties were bigger than drainage. But they all had that base knowledge,” stated Carrie Baron, former Drainage Manager with the City of Surrey


    “We cannot ignore that we had to switch strategies with provincial legislative changes. We were always trying to find out where the political and thus legislative focus was during my era as Drainage Manager, and then trying to fit our program to meet their focus. We used their language but still did what we needed for the City. At the local level, you work with the language of the day and you have to be savvy. When Surrey adopted a Sustainability Charter, it gave us the language we needed to protect environmental and drainage needs,” stated Carrie Baron.

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    FLASHBACK TO 2007: “We will be implementing green solutions as an alternative to conventional engineered blue solutions,” stated Rémi Dubé, Drainage Planning Manager with the City of Surrey, when he explained the provincial significance of the Fergus Creek watershed plan at a cross-border conference


    One of the questions addressed by a cross-border panel at a conference in 2007 was this: What lessons can Washington State and British Columbia learn from each other as they strive to minimize the impacts of rainwater/stormwater runoff? “The science-based analytical methodology that we have validated through the Fergus Creek process now enables the City of Surrey and other local governments to explore the fundamental requirements both explicit and implicit in Federal Fisheries Guidelines for stream health and environmental protection,” stated Rémi Dubé.

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