Category:

The conference resulted from concerns about protecting escarpments, riparian areas, groundwater supplies and the Bow River watersheds during development. According to Bert van Duin, the pre-conference workshop provided an opportunity for the British Columbia team to inform Albertans about the benefits of the water balance way-of-thinking. “We received excellent feed-back on the format and contents of the conference, in general, and the workshop in particular,” he said.

“It is great to see that the Province of British Columbia is proactively encouraging the drainage community to start using the all-encompassing Rainwater Management as an alternative to single-objective Stormwater Management,” stated Tom Liptan. “The language-shift that you have initiated in British Columbia is what we would like to see happen in Portland.”

UBC-Okanagan logo
Organized by APEGBC, the workshop was initiated by the City of Kelowna to provide Southern Interior design professionals and others with hands-on training in a computer lab setting.

Rainwater management is a key component of protecting quality of life, property and ecosystems. In the Greater Vancouver Region, a series of building block initiatives have resulted in a change in thinking among drainage practitioners. This change has seen the single function view of 'stormwater management' give way to the integrated and comprehensive perspective that is captured by the term 'rainwater management'.

The “Celebrating Green Infrastructure Program” is an outcome of a Consultation Workshop that was organized by the Green Infrastructure Partnership in May 2005. The goal of the program is to build regional capacity through sharing of green infrastructure approaches, experiences and lessons learned as an outcome of ‘designing with nature'. The program was launched in May 2006 when the first event in the 'Showcasing Innovation Series'was hosted by the District of North Vancouver. The Greater Vancouver program is a provincial pilot. The intention is that local governments on Vancouver Island and in the Interior will undertake similar initiatives.