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“Short-term thinking governs much of what we do. In many organizations, the long-term view has somehow become excluded. Both ways of thinking are important, but the sad part is that we have convinced ourselves that the Left Hemisphere can do EVERYTHING. The new research by Ian McGilchrist now ‘turns the table’ because it demonstrates the true and indispensable role of the Right Hemisphere for ALL sustainable development work,” states Eva Kras.

“The timing of this national conference, and the exposure to the British Columbia experience, coincided well with the implementation of U.S. EPA’s Phase II NPDES Storm Water Program during 2003,” recalls Eric Strecker. “We invited Kim Stephens to present a paper about the British Columbia Guidebook because we thought it would make a good fit with the theme of thinking beyond regulations to solving the problem.”

“In 2002, the Guidebook applied a science-based understanding, developed the water balance methodology to establish performance targets, and demonstrated that urban watershed restoration could be accomplished over a 50-year time-frame as and when communities redevelop,” states Peter Law. “The premise underpinning the Guidebook was that land development and watershed protection can be compatible.”

“Sustainable and resilient are complementary terms that draw attention to the future, and help focus thought and action. However, use of resilient more clearly shines the spotlight on Context, Intent and Results. Sustainable refers to attaining certain conditions in the context of social, economic and environmental considerations. Resilient in a biological sense is primarily the ability for an ecosystem to recover from an intervention,” states Erik Karlsen.

“By 2017, an over-arching program goal (for the Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative) is that local governments in the five participating regions would truly understand how natural systems support municipal services and would be able to fully integrate this understanding and associated methodologies into programs, planning and funding,” states Kim Stephens.

“The genesis for Integrated Stormwater Management Plans was a desire to integrate the community, engineering, planning and environmental perspectives. The implicit goal was to build and/or rebuild communities in balance with ecology. Local governments knew they had to do business differently to restore watershed health,” stated Robert Hicks.

“Delta is making ‘green infrastructure’ a standard practice in our community. These are no longer just ‘pilot projects’. Creating a watershed health legacy will ultimately depend on how well we are able to achieve rain water management improvements on both public and private sides of a watershed. There is a huge up-side if the private sector embraces their contribution to shared responsibility,” states Hugh Fraser.

“We anticipated that the workshop program would be good. In fact, it exceeded expectations. One technical area in which the BC team had an impact was the way in which they drew audience attention to the fundamental importance of soil-water interaction; and how an understanding of this relationship holds the key to implementing water balance solutions,” stated Glenn MacMillan.

“This single day workshop gave us the chance to listen and discover practices from BC in regards to watershed-based approach to rainwater management. The audience had not only the opportunity to learn about best-practices but also to discover tools that can be customized to the local context. We are grateful that the group stopped in Montreal to share this priceless information,” said Frédéric Moreau.

“The workshop was very enlightening – BC’s issues are very different in many ways from ours but the insight provided by the speakers on moving change forward was invaluable. The workshop was a great blend of the technical combined with the compelling back story of how and why BC and local municipalities are addressing their many stormwater management challenges,” stated Darlene Conway.