Water Balance Model Outreach & Continuing Education Program: Inter-Governmental Partnership Proceeding with Training Workshops

The mission of the Inter-Governmental Partnership (IGP) is to enable local governments and landowners to make informed land development decisions and meet performance targets for rainwater volume capture and runoff rate control under a variety of land use, soil and climate conditions.

The goal is that use of the Water Balance Model will become standard practice for land development decisions throughout British Columbia.

To accomplish this, the IGP has partnered with the Real Estate Foundation to build broad-based support for the ‘design with nature’ approach to rainwater management via an Outreach and Continuing Education Program (OCEP) that comprises seminar presentations and training workshops for a range of audience types. Click Here to Find out More

OCEP was launched at the 2003 Annual Conference of the Union of BC Municipalities. This event provided a high-level endorsement by elected officials. The IGP is also collaborating with the Urban Development Institute (UDI) to provide hands-on training for the land development community.

To date, workshops and/or forums have been hosted by the City of Chilliwack, the District of West Vancouver, the City of Surrey, and the City of Courtenay. In addition, a training workshop was held as part of the BC Land Summit in May 2004.

Richard Boase, Environmental Protection Officer for the District of North Vancouver, demonstrates the positive impacts that 300mm of absorbant soil can have for rainwater infiltration at a Water Balance Model Training Workshop sponsored by the Urban Development Institute (UDI), and hosted by the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) at its Downtown Vancouver Campus.