Category:

The story behind the story is about Younes Alila’s Flood Risk Methodology for flood protection. A complementary methodology is Jim Dumont’s Stream Health Methodology for habitat protection. Together they support holistic thinking. “The Stream Health Methodology starts with the stream and ends with the stream. The cornerstone is the flow duration relationship. Engineers routinely extrapolate way, way beyond the limits of the data and then argue fiercely about which curve fitting technique is most accurate,” stated Jim Dumont.

Voodoo Hydrology has been an industry staple ever since Andy Reese published his article. “Urban hydrology is stormwater management’s dirty little secret. It has been estimated that one out of every three design plan submittals has significant errors in hydrology estimates but only one in twenty is caught.” says Andy Reese. “The truth is: urban hydrology—including newer Green Infrastructure sizing approaches and even detailed modeling approaches—as commonly practiced, is an inexact science at best. We can just now make the same mistakes at near light speed! “

“Delta’s rain garden program started with a phone call from Deb Jones, a volunteer with the Cougar Creek Streamkeepers. In 2004, she approached me with a request that the municipality undertake a stormwater pilot infiltration pilot project in North Delta. We identified the opportunity to build the first rain garden at an elementary school. The project was a success and so was the ensuing program. Within the first decade, for example, Delta had constructed a total of 50-plus rain gardens. 10 of these were located at elementary schools,” stated Hugh Fraser.

“In 2003, the City was clearly visionary when it first embraced and then formalized a watershed-based approach as a foundation piece in the Official Community Plan. By the latter part of the decade, however, Coquitlam was viewed by others in the region as the example of what not do. A noteworthy aspect of the Coquitlam story is how quickly municipal staff learned from experience, adapted their approach, and successfully instilled a new way of doing business. Coquitlam is the model for keeping things simple, practical, and implementable,’ stated Kim Stephens.

“From green roofs in Toronto to Vancouver’s rain city strategy, Canadian cities are looking to become ‘sponges’ in order to help mitigate some of the effects of extreme rainfall events. The goal is to reverse some of the harm done by decades of car-oriented urban development, which involved replacing natural spaces that soak up water with impermeable infrastructure such as roads and parking lots. Green infrastructure can be incorporated into a landscape in many ways. Across Canada, cities appear to be jumping on board,” wrote Morgan Lowrie.

“Extreme weather, a changing climate, and impervious streets and roads have combined to create an urban disaster. All of this has seen cities begin to re-imagine their relationship with water. Rather than just designing systems that allow the water to drain away slowly and stably, they want to harvest and reuse it. This approach to urban design – where water is held in place to be called-upon when needed – is known as the ‘sponge city’, and it is rapidly growing in popularity,” stated Laurie Winkless.

“Whether it’s the community coming together to build rain gardens or adopt catch basins, dedicated volunteer streamkeepers who put in countless hours restoring and protecting important salmon habitat, or government decision-makers and employees enacting policies, everyone has a role to play in advancing Green Infrastructure implementation. There’s more work to be done as we collectively travel along a path to find upstream, proactive solutions to climate change impacts,” stated Joanna Ashworth..

“In the sciences, one of the largest challenges to research is science communication. A lot of fantastic studies are misinterpreted outside of scientific circles because the language, style and meaning of science writing is very different to non-specialists. With climate change studies, this can lead to a serious disconnect between climate change policy and the supporting research. Good policy is reliant of strong communication of everyone’s interests,” stated Charles Axelsson.

“The need to embrace LID practices arose from the need to prevent further increases in damage to both the environment and the agricultural community resulting from the increases in runoff from urban areas. The Neighbourhood Concept Plan (NCP) established rainfall capture objectives for maintaining the predevelopment runoff rates and volumes. The first phase of development brought the need to create calculation methods to verify that the designs complied with the NCP requirements,” stated Jim Dumont.

“It helps to look back to understand how we got to here. In 2000, DFO released Urban Stormwater Guidelines and Best Management Practices for Protection of Fish and Fish Habitat. By 2007, however, we had concerns about how the document was being interpreted and applied. ‘Beyond the Guidebook 2007’ represented the initial course correction,” stated Corinio Salomi. The Partnership for Water Sustainability has since released two more in the Beyond the Guidebook Series – in 2010 and 2015.