Water Balance Model Forum Highlights Importance of Establishing Regional Precedents
The Inter-Governmental Partnership held a Water Balance Model Partners Forum in March 2007 so that Partners could share success stories and lessons learned in implementing green infrastructure. During the Roundtable Sharing portion of the forum, one of the themes was the importance of establishing regional precedents. Several City of Vancouver examples were provided to illustrate how awareness of what others are pioneering leads to action elsewhere.
The experience of the City of Vancouver demonstrates that someone has to ‘build the first one' so that others 
will follow. Crown Street and Country Lanes have established regional precedents that other municipalities are now replicating. Both were featured in the Showcasing Innovation Series organized by the Green Infrastructure Partnership in 2006. For the complete story, please click on this link to Showcasing Innovation in the City of Vancouver. “The first year of performance monitoring for Crown Street has been completed and the results will be released shortly. I can confirm that the infiltration system is performing as expected”, Andrew Ling reported at the Partners Forum.
The East Fraser Lands project for a community of 13,000 along the north bank of 
the Fraser River within the City of Vancouver is a case study for “Beyond the Guidebook”. The project is applying a design with nature approach that advances the state-of-the-practice in rainwater management by doing something on each roadway to achieve a rainwater management outcome. Innovative rainwater management systems will turn rainwater into a resource and enhance the quality of rainwater before it is released to the Fraser River ecosystem. The project also involves an innovative application of the Water Balance Model to support technical decision-making. The Official Development Plan for the project has received an Award of Excellence from the Canadian Institute of Planners. For more on this story, please click here.
“The City of Vancouver's Country Lanes provided the inspiration for West Vancouver's first green lane adjacent to St. Francis in the Woods Church in historic Lower Caulfeild”, noted Saleem Mahmood of the District of West Vancouver. For more on this story, please click here.
Water Balance Model Partners Forum
Hosted by the Greater Vancouver Regional District, the Partners Forum provided a timely opportunity to roll out ‘Beyond the Guidebook', a runoff-based approach to drainage modeling that connects the dots between source control evaluation and stream health assessment.
Special guests at the Partners Forum included Liliana Bozic (City of Calgary), Chair of the Alberta Low Impact Development Partnership (ALIDP); Dr. Charles Rowney, the designated Scientific Authority for the Water Balance Model; and Linda Pechacek (from Houston, Texas), representing the Urban Water Resources Research Council. For the complete story on the Partners Forum, please click here.
Posted May 2007