Roundtable: Imagining a day without water—with planning, it’s something we can avoid

Gary: The intensity and frequency of storm events have a crippling effect on our natural environment and water quality. Flood waters are highly problematic. They collect solvents (stored in basements and garages), carry sediments, contaminate brooks and streams in aquifers, and carry incredible destructive force. Recent flood events in Houston, Texas, and North Carolina are examples.

As communities work to mitigate the impacts of flooding, sea level rise, and storm surge, they’ve found added challenges. Hardening shorelines compromise valuable natural resources such as marshes, impede recreation along our waterfronts, and are prohibitively costly.

David: Protecting water quality remains a priority. Outbreaks of waterborne diseases have been decreasing in the developed world as our understanding of their causes improves and we take treatment and management steps to protect public health. For example, our understanding of the importance of a full source-to-tap approach has led us, as water engineers, to put equal emphasis on source water protection and treatment.

Risk-based approaches that account for the likelihood of pathogens and other contaminants in our source waters are now being used to help us determine the most appropriate combination of soft and hard infrastructure to meet treated water quality regulations.

Are there certain regions more prone to water issues over others?

David: Growth and densification will present new challenges for our smaller urban communities in the next 20 years. Communities that have historically relied on relatively pristine water sources and minimal treatment will need to reevaluate their approaches as growth potentially increases the pollutant load in their watersheds.

The work done by health authorities, the research community, and our more advanced water utilities to improve our understanding of pathogens and contaminants in our raw and treated water has improved public health protection, but it has also uncovered previously unknown risks. Smaller communities will have the dual challenge of funding additional treatment infrastructure and convincing long-time residents that their historically safe water sources are not as secure as they have been led to believe.

George: Each region tends to have its own unique issues, but all are at equal risk. In the US East, urbanization and water quality are big issues. While in the US West, communities are focused on securing enough water access and managing water rights. Unfortunately, all areas suffer from degradation, and the factors that tend to drive restoration funding are unique in each region.

Gary: The issue of water quality and the resulting economic impacts to impaired quality has no boundaries.

Think about what’s happened in recent years with potable water in places like Michigan. While in California, they manage two extremes between heavy floods or drought conditions. Consider the fact that nearly 40% of the world’s population lives along a coast; a significant impact along a coast will have resounding ripple effects. In some major cities, our potable water piping networks are well over 100 years old. These systems can and do fail, resulting in local flooding, loss of water, lack of water to urban populations and businesses, and risks to public health.

In your professional role, how can our work help protect this resource?

George: Our Ecosystem Restoration program at Stantec is focused on restoring natural function to degraded ecosystems. We have a very talented team that wakes up every day with the goal of protecting and restoring the natural resources in our communities. We study and understand natural ecological processes and then apply these learnings to our restoration projects. Our goal is to design streams, wetlands, prairies, etc. the way Mother Nature would design them. If we consider natural processes in the design, we can create much more resilient ecosystems that support our vital resources.

David: Stantec has been developing multiple approaches to help our smaller community clients effectively meet tightening water treatment regulations. These include the design of pre-fabricated, packaged water treatment plants that can be easily installed in small, remote communities. This also includes stakeholder engagement and public education to help raise awareness of the issues surrounding public health protection through water treatment.

Gary: One topic that resonates with me is access to potable water. There’s going to be greater demand for potable water as populations shift and we continue to feel the impacts of climate change. In particular, there’s pressure on drinking water quality with the impact of saline from storm surge.

In our communities, resources are dedicated to conveying storm water away as quickly as possible and conveying potable water in, often from great distance, as safely as possible. Landscape architects can greatly influence design decisions and assist in adapting traditional approaches that, in the past, have not always been mindful of a systems-based design. There are opportunities to use the same water more readily and adapting our infrastructure accordingly, especially in cities that face the challenge of aging infrastructure.

Take, for example, Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters Initiative. The ability of green infrastructure to detain and infiltrate stormwater (in addition to the vital recreation improvements they generate) should be examined across all communities. These balanced solutions—systems that can regenerate and heal on their own, while supporting local aesthetics, water quality, and habitat—provide great opportunity to protect our water resources and communities.

For our coastlines, living shorelines immediately come to mind as a landscape design solution to protecting our communities from storm surge and helping preserve water quality in our bays, oceans, and estuaries. We’re seeing parks and open space increasingly being viewed as critical infrastructure, particularly in urban areas. Parks are ripe for needed investment, which has the potential to generate a triple bottom line benefit to the environment, community, and local economy.