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“It has been very interesting seeing the different approaches that the five regional governments are taking towards monitoring and assessing the health of our watersheds,” comments Jody Watson. “Through this series of inter-regional gatherings, we have shared our successes and challenges in evaluating watershed health, learned valuable lessons from each other, and have made fantastic contacts with like-minded people doing similar work in other regions.”

“The Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative is designed to help local government champions integrate natural systems thinking and adaptation to a changing climate into asset management. A desired outcome is healthy streams and watersheds. So, implement ‘Design With Nature’ standards of practice for development and infrastructure servicing. Protect and restore stream corridors and fish habitat,” stated Peter Law.

“A new community is emerging in northeast Coquitlam at Burke Mountain. A key feature of planned development at Burke Mountain is a low impact, ‘natural systems approach’ to rainwater management. This approach will strive to preserve the natural water balance. In simple terms this means designing to get stormwater into the ground and to keep it out of the pipes,” stated Don Moore.

“BC stormwater criteria and tools are receiving increasing recognition across North America because of their unique emphasis on solving both flooding and environmental problems at the source. This rethinking of traditional approaches to urban hydrology is helping to achieve higher levels of stream protection by integrating land use planning with volume-based strategies,” wrote Kim Stephens in 2004.

“Innovative approaches are needed in order to mitigate the risk of flooding, pollution, and aquatic ecosystem degradation, and enhance beneficial uses of urban waters. To examine such approaches, a series of three regional conferences on innovative rainwater and stormwater management were held in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto during 2007 to 2008,” stated Dr. Hans Schreier.