"The way we see the world is shaped by our vocabulary," observes Metro Vancouver's Robert Hicks
Total Water Management Introduced
“The concept of ‘total water management’ is the new buzz phrase in Europe. LID is so passé,” comments Robert Hicks, a Senior Engineer with the Metro Vancouver regional government in British Columbia. “When you think about it, the way we see the world is shaped by our vocabulary.”
Total Water Management: Practices for a Sustainable Future, by Neil S. Grigg, explains what Total Water Management means in unambiguous language. It expands, explains, and illustrates core concepts and how to apply them. It is about the balance between our responsibilities to provide safe and reliable water services and to protect the environment.
How Relationships and Worth are Perceived: “Other languages like French and German often use more exact terms than English for ‘stormwater’ and ‘wastewater’, and this changes how relationships and worth are perceived – for example, eaux pluvials, eaux usées transliterate as rainwater and used water; and Regenwasser and Abwasser transliterate as rainwater and ‘out’ water,” explains Robert Hicks.
“Also, in English we use wastewater where waste has a negative value, and stormwater where storm disregards all the other precipitation events at work. While these all share the common thread of water, wasser or eau, ‘total water management’ may be more easy rationalized in some other languages as water is either rainwater, drinking water or used water. Nothing is waste in the water cycle and the word waste does not appear in the terminology,” concludes Robert Hicks.