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“Looking at the length of the list of milestones and reflecting on the array of initiatives, it is amazing how much we were able to pack into such a short period of time. A phrase that best describes this era is commitment to collaboration. Senior government, regional government, municipalities. We were all in the room learning together, working together, sharing. It truly was a team approach. We were outcome-oriented. Our mantra was create livable communities and protect stream health,” explained Richard Boase, a principal player for event delivery during the period 2006 through 2011.

“The Water Balance Model and Green Infrastructure partnerships were formed within a year of each other, in 2002 and 2003. The Water Balance Model Partnership came first because this scenario modelling tool was developed as an extension of the Stormwater Guidebook. Our initial successes raised awareness and interest such that the UBCM leadership gave us a platform at their 2003 UBCM convention. This resulted from the advocacy of Gibson Mayor Barry Janyk. Kim Stephens asked Chilliwack’s Dipak Basu to help tell our WBM story,” stated Ted van der Gulik.

“I got a call from Don Stenson, Director of Planning with the City of Burnaby. He said there is one thing that I want you to never forget… STORMWATER. What does stormwater have to do with anything, I thought. I knew about contaminated soil and geotechnical issues. But stormwater? I had never encountered the word. But there is no doubt, he went on to say, that it is going to be very important that whatever you build on top of that mountain, the stormwater flows into Stoney Creek must be no worse than they are today,” stated Michael Geller.

“The Water Balance Methodology and Model were created for scenario comparison purposes. These were transformational in helping decision makers visualize HOW their municipalities could meet watershed targets and mitigate population growth and climate change, one property at a time. This built support for changes in development practices and galvanized action in the 2000s. Unfortunately, memories are short and knowledge is either forgotten, lost or ignored as the players change. And so, momentum is dissipated and backsliding sets in,” stated Kim Stephens.

“In 2004, the City of Stratford in Ontario approved a secondary plan for a future city expansion based on an evaluation of three plans, one of which was the Fused Grid. In 2006, CMHC initiated a supplementary case study to assess the potential for reducing or eliminating rainwater runoff from the development area,” reports Fanis Grammenos. “The question for this analysis was to assess to what extent street layout, amount and distribution of open space, and building form affect the post-development runoff resulting from the impermeable surfaces that urban development creates.”

The Home Depot project was one of the earliest applications of the Water Balance Methodology pursuant to the Stormwater Planning Guidebotok. “In 2003, the Home Depot development application in the City of Courtenay was to build a store and parking lot covering 90% of a four hectare second growth coniferous forest property,” stated Kevin Lagan. “The City required that post-development rainwater and stormwater flows leaving the site were equal to or less than the pre-development flows. For this property that was effectively zero.”

“A decade ago, we thought that the best we could do would be to Hold the Line for 20 years; and if we could do that for 20 years, we believed that we might be able to improve conditions over a 50-year period,” stated Kim Stephens. “We went back to the basics to gain an understanding of how we could protect or restore the natural water balance by changing the way land is developed. A decade ago, the breakthrough in thinking came when we developed the concept of a Rainfall Spectrum to categorize the rainfall-days that occur each year.”

Charles Rowney, PhD, was larger than life. A leader and innovator, he was a giant in the field of water resource modelling. In British Columbia, the enduring legacy of Charles Rowney resides in the web-based Water Balance Model suite of modelling tools. In the United States, creation of the Center for Infrastructure Modelling and Management (ncimm.org) in 2016 was a crowning achievement in the career of Charles Rowney. He was a driving force to provide sustainable research, development and outreach for water infrastructure modeling.

“The purpose of the ‘Beyond the Guidebook’ initiative is to help local governments and the development community establish what level of rainwater runoff volume reduction makes sense at the site, catchment and watershed scales. The objective is to protect stream health, which is broader than how much volume one can infiltrate on a particular development,” stated Corino Salomi, “Drainage practice is at a crossroad in the path defining the methodologies and applications used in rainwater management. “

No longer is asset management only about hard engineered assets – watermains, sewers, roads. Watershed systems are also “infrastructure assets”. Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework sets a strategic direction that would refocus business processes on outcomes that reduce life-cycle costs and risks. “Financial support from three levels of government makes it possible for the Partnership for Water Sustainability to develop tools, resources and programs,” stated Ted van der Gulik.