Water Balance Model for British Columbia: Land development and watershed protection can be compatible
“Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for British Columbia” formalized a science-based understanding to set performance targets for reducing rainwater runoff volumes and rates. These targets represent the synthesis of biological and hydrological understanding. At the heart of the Guidebook is the Water Balance Methodology. Recognizing that practitioners and others needed a tool so that they could readily apply the Methodology, the Inter-Governmental Partnership then developed the Water Balance Model for British Columbia.
Water Balance Model Outreach & Continuing Education Program: Inter-Governmental Partnership Proceeding with Training Workshops
The Inter-Governmental Partnership has partnered with the Real Estate Foundation to build broad-based support for the ‘design with nature’ approach to rainwater management via an Outreach and Continuing Education Program that comprises seminar presentations and training workshops for a range of audience types.
Water Balance Model in the Class Room: Interest stretches from coast-to-coast!
The British Columbia-based Inter-Governmental Partnership is reaching out to academia to bring the Water Balance Model into university classrooms. The University of British Columbia and the University of Calgary are the first post-secondary institutions to incorporate the Water Balance Model in undergraduate and master's level courses, respectively. Dalhousie University in Halifax and the University of Guelph in Ontario have also expressed interest in using this scenario modeling and decision support tool.
Rain gardens soak up urban stormwater pollution
Properly designed “rain gardens” can effectively trap and retain up to 99 percent of common pollutants in urban storm runoff, potentially improving water quality and promoting the conversion of some pollutants into less harmful compounds. This is according to new research scheduled for publication in the February 15, 2006 issue of the American Chemical Society journal, “Environmental Science and Technology”. The affordable, easy-to-design gardens could help solve one of the nation’s most pressing pollution problems.
Design with Nature & Rainwater Management: UBC-Okanagan hosted Water Balance Model training workshop in February 2006
“Use of the tool will help design professionals understand what ‘thinking outside the pipe’ and ‘designing with nature’ actually mean in the context of ‘green’ subdivisions that have been built in recent years in British Columbia,” stated Richard Boase. “The tool enables assessment of the effectiveness of site designs that incorporate rainwater source controls such as absorbent landscaping, rain gardens, infiltration facilities and green roofs. The Water Balance Model can be applied at three scales: site, subdivision and watershed.”