Water sensitive urban design - progress or plateau?

First published by Alluvium at http://www.alluvium.com.au/Blog/December-2013-(1)/Growing-pains.aspx

I attended the 8th International Water Sensitive Urban Design 2013 conference held on the Gold Coast a couple of weeks ago. I have been to a few of these now and it was interesting to observe how water sensitive urban design (WSUD), which I define as distributed stormwater quality assets, is evolving.

My summary is that it is experiencing ‘growing pains’. The initial waves of innovation and early adopter initiatives have been and gone. The constant background noise on why bother with WSUD, is it sustainable, how much does it cost and how will we maintain it continues to be a buzz of discontent across the industry. There are not many examples of WSUD becoming the norm; they remain the exception. Just drive around any city and count how many roads have and don’t have WSUD.

In Melbourne, there is approximately:
• Over 1000 km2 of impervious area
• 450 gigalitres of stormwater generated on average every year that flows to Port Phillip or Westernport Bay (Office of Living Victoria)
• 15,000 tonnes of Nitrogen flowing to the bay (CSIRO)
• And 77,000 more people every year moving into the city (ABS).

The need for WSUD is huge. The need to manage water efficiently, build new houses, retrofit old ones, build new suburbs, shops and employment centres in a way that improves the quality of life for those that live there but also maintains some ecological value of waterways and surrounding environment, has never been greater. In South East Queensland there is forecast to be 754,000 new dwellings built over 25 years, or over 20 km2 of new urban development every year (South East Queensland Regional Plan). Again, WSUD must be embedded in every part of that 20 km2. 

But I’m not sure where the next step change or up-scaling of the industry is coming from, after this latest three day conference. While new projects and research were discussed, particularly around stormwater harvesting and urban waterway/ecological issues, we seem to be having the same conversations as we did five years ago. 

I hope this is about growing pains. There are some regulations across the country that drive better environmental outcomes, but they aren’t widespread, or don’t apply to all types of development. My assessment is that the industry has plateaued, or perhaps even is in decline. I would argue a movement towards stormwater ‘offset’ programs is not a leap forward but a leap sideways (and some I know would argue it is a decline). 

One enlightening moment for me was hearing about the journey that New York City is currently going on. Bram Gunther, Chief of Forestry in their Horticulture & Natural Resources Group, outlined the range of initiatives they are doing: 1 million new trees, wetland reclamation, matching tree planting with published health data, permeable paving and buffering against super storms. The key was that they had a mountain of data and evidence for all of these issues. And now they have a $2.4 billion budget!

To create the next step of change in Australia, the industry needs to get politically savvy. We need to position this type of work at the heart of improving the quality of life for people in cities, that is 90% of Australia’s population, and soon to be 70% of the world’s population. We need to position it so that it means something to a home owner / renter, to the industrial park developer, and to the citywide urban planners. And it has to be delivered to the political leaders. It has got to be a positive message, a dream, and an aspiration. There is limited value convincing engineers, planners or ecologists. They don’t make the big decisions, politicians do. Then the policy, regulation and more importantly the benefits will flow. Just like New York.

China FTA and water - what does it mean?

First published by Alluvium at http://www.alluvium.com.au/Blog/January-2015/China-Australia-Free-Trade-Agreement---what-does-t.aspx 

The explosion of growth in China back in 2002 was something to behold. At the time I was hanging out in a central Chinese city called Wuhan, in little laneways and fields, sandwiched between the city and the many lakes. I was doing a little research project on a possible WaterWatch program in the city, with the help of the local university and China’s EPA*. It was a city of 8 million people (now it’s 10.5 million), and the first major city downstream of the Three Gorges Dam and on the fertile plains of the Yangzte River. It had real water quality issues in the lakes too.

With the high profile announcement of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in November, and Andrew Robb explicitly suggesting that Australia can export its water related professional services to China, I wonder if I’ll be back there again soon? 

Before me or anyone else packs their bags, I do remember being blown away when I visited the Chinese Ministry for Water Resources and heard about the 16,000 people working just on monitoring rivers!

The other element of the free trade agreement and one that is closer to home is how it might influence our own water resources, through increased agricultural production – i.e. will we need to use more water to export goods to China?

Not necessarily. I say that on the basis that there is no good estimate of how much the FTA is worth - well covered here by The Guardian - though the most commonly cited figure is $18 billion over 10 years. 

Dairy seems to be the big winner in terms of export potential, and that industry is currently the second highest user of water in the agricultural sectors (consuming 2000 gigalitres a year according the ABS).

If diary production doubled to supply Chinese markets, then yes Australia has to have a serious look at what that means for our water resources and environment. That would be like adding five cities the size of Melbourne (in terms of water used). But equally it could be turned into an opportunity to innovate and become more efficient. Or it might not register in the context of many other economic and environmental changes that happen in Australia! 

What do you get for $15 million of water assets - and can you maintain it?

Water sensitive urban design, or smarter use of stormwater in cities, has been around for 20 years or so.  It creates greenery in the urban landscape, and cleans the water before going to rivers and bays. It's a good thing - but hasn't been adopted as a mainstream design opportunity in any city in Australia. 

And one of the reasons why is maintenance.  Prof Tim Fletcher says he thinks maintenance is the largest impediment to adopting WSUD right now.

Stormwater Victoria ran a seminar on WSUD Maintenance.  Fair to say lots of people are aware of the problem, but we are a fair way off fixing it.  We know more about what good maintenance looks like, and why assets have failed in the past.  

Melbourne Water have spent $15 million on grants with local council over the past 10 years helping them co-fund WSUD assets. So they were very keen to know which assets are still working and why or why not.  Short answer - not as many as you'd hope.

Get the design right, spend more time on hold points in construction, and then put WSUD into a mainstream asset management database and system so that it can be maintained.  

I think the key is simpler designs, and more proactive maintenance, and all couched (as Dale from E2D said), in the language of financial liabilities and community benefits.  We hope to be part of the next wave of WSUD and new maintenance models.  

How households could DOUBLE Elon Musk's battery project

Today Wave Consulting is offering to add a third part of the energy plan.  It will double the impact of Elon Musk's idea - and also harnesses the power of houses to fix the grid and go renewable.  

The first part of the plan was Telsa's and Zen Energy's proposal for a 100 MW battery delivered in 100 days. 

The second was Impact Investment's offer to add 100 MW of renewable energy. 

And our third is that within 100 days, we can run a program to add a battery to 15000 individual houses which will also add 100 MW of distributed storage to the grid.  It means individual houses have their own storage, for their own use 95% of the time, but in peak times the national grid taps into them and adds valuable capacity and supply to the grid.  

100MW now becomes 200 MW!   And power is literally coming from the people.  

Let's go for it!