Rebekah Ruth Brown

Impediments and Solutions to Sustainable, Watershed-Scale Urban Stormwater Management: Lessons from Australia and the United States

In urban and suburban areas, stormwater runoff is a primary stressor on surface waters. Conventional urban stormwater drainage systems often route runoff directly to streams and rivers, thus exacerbating pollutant inputs and hydrologic disturbance, and resulting in the degradation of ecosystem structure and function. Decentralized stormwater management tools, such as low impact development (LID) or water sensitive urban design (WSUD), may offer a more sustainable solution to stormwater management if implemented at a watershed scale. These tools are designed to pond, infiltrate, and harvest water at the source, encouraging evaporation, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, and re-use of stormwater. While there are numerous demonstrations of WSUD practices, there are few examples of widespread implementation at a watershed scale with the explicit objective of protecting or restoring a receiving stream. This article identifies seven major impediments to sustainable urban stormwater management: (1) uncertainties in performance and cost, (2) insufficient engineering standards and guidelines, (3) fragmented responsibilities, (4) lack of institutional capacity, (5) lack of legislative mandate, (6) lack of funding and effective market incentives, and (7) resistance to change. By comparing experiences from Australia and the United States, two developed countries with existing conventional stormwater infrastructure and escalating stream ecosystem degradation, we highlight challenges facing sustainable urban stormwater management and offer several examples of successful, regional WSUD implementation. We conclude by identifying solutions to each of the seven impediments that, when employed separately or in combination, should encourage widespread implementation of WSUD with watershed-based goals to protect human health and safety, and stream ecosystems.

Taking the “Waste” Out of “Wastewater” for Human Water Security and Ecosystem Sustainability

Humans create vast quantities of wastewater through inefficiencies and poor management of water systems. The wasting of water poses sustainability challenges, depletes energy reserves, and undermines human water security and ecosystem health. Here we review emerging approaches for reusing wastewater and minimizing its generation. These complementary options make the most of scarce freshwater resources, serve the varying water needs of both developed and developing countries, and confer a variety of environmental benefits. Their widespread adoption will require changing how freshwater is sourced, used, managed, and priced.

The water sensitive city: Principles for practice

With the widespread realisation of the significance of climate change, urban communities are increasingly seeking to ensure resilience to future uncertainties in urban water supplies, yet change seems slow with many cities facing ongoing investment in the conventional approach. This is because transforming cities to more sustainable urban water cities, or to Water Sensitive Cities, requires a major overhaul of the hydro-social contract that underpins conventional approaches. This paper provides an overview of the emerging research and practice focused on system resilience and principles of sustainable urban water management Three key pillars that need to underpin the development and practice of a Water Sensitive City are proposed: (i) access to a diversity of water sources underpinned by a diversity of centralised and decentralised infrastructure; (ii) provision of ecosystem services for the built and natural environment; and (iii) socio-political capital for sustainability and water sensitive behaviours. While there is not one example in the world of a Water Sensitive City, there are cities that lead on distinct and varying attributes of the water sensitive approach and examples from Australia and Singapore are presented.

The enabling institutional context for integrated water management: Lessons from Melbourne

There is widespread international acceptance that climate change, demographic shifts and resource limitations impact on the performance of water servicing in cities. In response to these challenges, many scholars propose that a fundamental move away from traditional centralised infrastructure towards more integrated water management is required. However, there is limited practical or scholarly understanding of how to enable this change in practice and few modern cities have done so successfully. This paper addresses this gap by analysing empirical evidence of Melbournes recent experience in shifting towards a hybrid of centralised and decentralised infrastructure to draw lessons about the institutional context that enabled this shift. The research was based on a qualitative single-case study, involving interviews and envisioning workshops with urban water practitioners who have been directly involved in Melbournes water system changes. It was found that significant changes occurred in the cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions of Melbournes water system. These included a shift in cultural beliefs for the water profession, new knowledge through evidence and learning, additional water servicing goals and priorities, political leadership, community pressure, better coordinated governance arrangements and strong market mechanisms. The paper synthesises lessons from the case study that, with further development, could form the basis of prescriptive guidance for enabling the shift to new modes of water servicing to support more liveable, sustainable and resilient outcomes for future cities.

Interdisciplinarity: How to catalyse collaboration.

FACT FINDING Interdisciplinarity will be a headline topic at the GRC annual meeting in Delhi in May 2016, organized by India’s Science and Engineering Research Board and RCUK. A report on the state of play worldwide is being commissioned by RCUK, on behalf of the GRC (the team to undertake the research will be appointed in October). The report will survey current policy and practice among global research funders. What forms of support do they offer to interdisciplinary research? How and where is it done? What are its outputs and impacts? The survey will begin to establish base data on how interdisciplinarity can best be stimulated and managed, and look for good practice in this most precious and complex of research endeavours. The GRC expects to issue a policy statement following this meeting, as it has done previously on topical areas. These documents focus and clarify attitudes on key subjects. They marshal data that can be used while national policies are established and international cooperation is developed. We need much better definitions of what kind of thing we are supporting when and if we support interdisciplinary research, and better intelligence about what works. ■

Challenges ahead: social and institutional factors influencing sustainable urban stormwater management in Australia

In a time of climate uncertainty and drought in Australia, improved urban stormwater quality management practices are required not only for protecting waterway health, but also as a fit-for-purpose supply source. To conceive of urban stormwater as an environmental threat as well as a water supply source requires a substantial shift in our traditional linear supply and wastewater structures towards more hybrid and complex infrastructure systems. To understand what drives and limits treatment technology adoption for stormwater management, over 800 urban water professionals in three Australian capital cities completed an online questionnaire survey in November 2006. Using the conceptual framework of receptivity assessment, the results revealed the professional community to be highly associated with the importance of improving stormwater quality for receiving waterway health, yet they do not consider that politicians share this perspective by placing a substantially lower level of importance on stormwater quality management. Significant acquisition barriers within each city, including institutional arrangements, costs, responsibilities, and regulations and approvals processes were all identified as constraining more sustainable practices. Capacity building programs, fostering greater socio-political capital and developing key demonstration projects with training events are recommended as useful policy interventions for addressing current institutional impediments.

Drawing on Social Theory for Transitioning to Sustainable Urban Water Management: Turning the Institutional Super-tanker

Abstract Worldwide, urban water managers are grappling with the challenge of managing water resources more sustainably. Numerous commentators have highlighted significant social and technological barriers to the uptake of new approaches and some are calling for a major socio-technical transition in urban water management. Social research and theory is an increasingly important factor in understanding and responding to the challenges associated with evolving a more sustainable society. This paper draws upon key social theories around change to propose a framework for transition policy that can be applied by urban water strategists when designing reform initiatives to progress sustainable urban water management.

Fostering environmental champions: a process to build their capacity to drive change.

This paper describes a six-step process to build the leadership capacity of environmental champions. This process was developed during research involving champions in Australian water agencies. The process, like leadership, is sensitive to context. It includes gathering local information on the factors that assist particular types of champion to exert influence, and using this information to build customized capacity building tools, such as leadership development programs. The paper explains each step in the process and provides illustrative examples from research on water agency champions. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed, including the hypothesis that the process should be transferable to other work environments under certain circumstances.

Extreme events: being prepared for the pitfalls with progressing sustainable urban water management

It is widely accepted that new, more sustainable approaches to urban water management are required if cities and ecosystems are to become resilient to the effects of growing urban populations and global warming. Climate change predictions show that it is likely that cities around the world will be subject to an increasing number of extreme and less predictable events including flooding and drought. Historical transition studies have shown that major events such as extremes can expedite the adoption of new practices by destabilising existing management regimes and opening up new windows of opportunity for change. Yet, they can also act to reinforce and further entrench old practices. This case study of two Australian cities responding to extreme water scarcity reveals that being unprepared for extremes can undermine progress towards sustainable outcomes. The results showed that despite evidence of significant progress towards sustainable urban water management in Brisbane and Melbourne, the extreme water scarcity acted to reinforce traditional practices at the expense of emerging sustainability niches. Drawing upon empirical research and transitions literature, recommendations are provided for developing institutional mechanisms that are able to respond proactively to extreme events and be a catalyst for SUWM when such opportunities for change arise.

Understanding the Factors That Influence Domestic Water Consumption within Melbourne

Abstract This social research project investigated the factors that influence community receptivity to using alternative water sources and technologies at the household scale. Focused through the City of Bayside, in southeast Melbourne, it involved a survey testing receptivity to a series of proposed activities using rainwater, greywater and seawater. It also tested perceived barriers to installing water reuse technologies. Increasing population and potential implications of climate change are driving the need to substantially reduce Melbourne’s potable water demand. So far, there have been few investigations into how to improve community receptivity to potable substitution to support urban water reform initiatives. The results revealed that water reuse receptivity was highest for external uses, such as watering gardens and flushing toilets, and progressively decreased with increasing personal contact, with receptivity to greywater declining more rapidly. Retrofitting of domestic rainwater tanks and greywater reuse systems was identified at around 5%. Difficulty, cost and renter status were revealed as key barriers to widespread implementation rather than poor awareness and attitudes. This evidence suggests that it is imperative that future initiatives harness this strong receptivity. Dedicated incentives, combined with active skills transfer and implementation and operational knowledge-building, should be the core elements of future programs, which need to be facilitated by a ‘help-line’ type service.