Bracing for rain: A cross-municipal analysis of stormwater policy in the capital region
| dc.contributor.author | Charette, Lily | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-11-07T19:41:12Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-11-07T19:41:12Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.description | 2025 UVic Sustainability Scholars Program Final Report | |
| dc.description.abstract | 1. Introduction Stormwater management is an important issue in the Capital Regional District (CRD). This report examines the management of stormwater in the region through an analysis of current stormwater policies and interviews with professionals working in the area. The interviews identify challenges to improved management, including limited funding, unclear or inconsistent rules around green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), and a general lack of coordination among local governments and agencies. The project also highlights opportunities to improve stormwater management, including expanding funding opportunities for monitoring and GSI, as well as improving collaboration, education, and regulations. This study provides a concise overview of the current stormwater policies in various municipalities in the CRD in comparison to a standard developed based on best management practices for the purpose of this report. This report is intended to bring awareness to current policies and ways local governments can improve stormwater management through strong bylaws and regulations. 2. Background Managing stormwater is key to reducing runoff impacts in our increasingly urbanized and impermeable landscape. As stormwater runs off hard surfaces like roofs, driveways, and roads, it also carries pollutants to those environments, impacting local wildlife and public health (Congressional Research Service, 2016). While today, public and environmental health are important considerations for urban stormwater infrastructure, this has not always been the case. A vast majority of the urban stormwater infrastructure is based on the sewer systems developed in 19th-century Europe (Bertrand-Krajewski, 2021). These systems, which are built into many cities' underlying structures, focus only on sanitation. After almost a century, the drawbacks of these systems have been recognised widely. From the discharge of contaminants to water bodies, to high infrastructure costs and the modification of important hydrological cycles, the issues with traditional stormwater infrastructure led to a significant paradigm shift, and new integrated management approaches began to emerge in the 1970s (Bertrand-Krajewski, 2021). Across North America, stormwater management still relies heavily on traditional infrastructure, also referred to as grey infrastructure, which utilises pipes, tanks, and other artificial means to transport stormwater. While this approach focuses on the process of removing stormwater, it does not consider water quality or natural flow processes. Green stormwater management (GSM) has emerged in recent decades as a commonly acknowledged approach to stormwater management that can help regions build strategies for management that also consider environmental sustainability, climate change, and adaptation (Heidari et al., 2022). While research has demonstrated the benefits of these 4 approaches and led to their widespread acceptance, implementation is still slow (Heidari et al., 2022). In order to gain a better understanding of current stormwater management approaches in the Capital Regional District (CRD), this study provides an analysis of the current stormwater policies across various municipalities and provides insights into some of the challenges in implementation and management, as well as opportunities for improvement. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Peninsula Streams Society | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22897 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | stormwater | |
| dc.subject | policy | |
| dc.subject | capital region | |
| dc.subject | urban | |
| dc.subject | infrastructure | |
| dc.subject | green stormwater infrastructure | |
| dc.subject | Sustainability Scholars Program | |
| dc.subject.department | School of Environmental Studies | |
| dc.title | Bracing for rain: A cross-municipal analysis of stormwater policy in the capital region | |
| dc.type | Report |