Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink
In a week of heavy rain in Sydney it’s good to reflect on our water sources and strategies when it comes to water management.
Each time it rains, I see thousands and thousands of litres of beautiful, fresh water run down the hill and into the sea, taking with it nutrients from the top soil, and toxins from the roads. For this reason I never swim after a rainstorm.*
Since living in Sydney I have often wondered about our stormwater and why it is not captured for recycling (at least it seems in many areas of Sydney). I’ve also wondered, at times, if the power of a Sydney storm as it runs through our drains could somehow be harnessed for power generation (a mini hydro scheme). Or at least funnelled into places where it could be a source of hydration. Say for irrigation.
All of this time it seems I’ve been thinking about Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) yet not knowing there was a term for it, nor that many places around the world are doing great things in the discipline.
Even in our own city, places like Blacktown City Council are developing policies around WSUD to ensure that new developments (and infill developments) take WSUD into some consideration. In Blacktown over 30,000 new homes are to be built over the next ten years, so I hope that their WSUD development guidelines are followed (their developer toolkit and WSUD principles are worth a look).
One of the planning instruments that Blacktown are using to promote WSUD is to ask developers to provide a monetary contribution to WSUD in and related water cycle management in lieu of on-site water control requirements.They have different levels of requirements relating to WSUD for different ares of development (more here).
In comparing Blacktown and Vancouver as part of our group project I’ve also come across some excellent sources of information regarding the impact of governance on water management. I’m yet to fully dig into these two papers, but am sure they are going to be good fodder.
- Water Governance in Canada: Innovation and Fragmentation—Bakker, K. & Cook, C. (2011).
- Managing complexity in Australian urban water governance: Transitioning Sydney to a water sensitive city—Floyd, J., Iaquinto, B., Ison, R. & Collins, K. (2014).
In the Australian paper they introduce a social complexity model from Tainter which the authors use to frame their understanding of how we as a society will be able to deal with the increasing complexity required of managing shrinking resources. I’m particularly interested in how the authors use Tainter’s notion of ‘enthusiasm’ as a possible lever to engage the community in actions toward sustainability (related to water conservation in this case). They say that without enthusiasm the community will not engage in water conservation activities, and that enthusiasm will best be promoted through giving the community some agency in the management of their water.
The manner in which both Vancouver and Blacktown are approaching community engagement appears to fit in with Tainter’s model as introduced by Floyd et al. In both cities, engagement and education programs appear to be helping citizens to have agency in decisions which affect them. In Vancouver, they’ve been helping citizens to be ‘waterwise’ through education, achievable tasks, and through simple games. In Blacktown the Cool Streets program is an excellent vehicle for developing ownership around a sustainability initiative.
*Bondi does recycle some of its stormwater. Around 50 million litres per year. I wonder how much of a percentage this is of total volume.
