About RAINWATER with City of Vancouver Green Infrastructure Manager MELINA SCHOLEFIELD

THE IMPOSSIBLE HAS ALREADY HAPPENED

Earth Day 2021:

“There are so many things that we can help create in our city by valuing water, valuing rainwater, and helping restore and mimic natural processes that we’ve disrupted through settlement and development.”

Melinda Scholefield

ABOUT MELINA SCHOLEFIELD: Water Steward As the manager of green infrastructure at the City of Vancouver, Scholefield is a progressive and transformative leader with vision who cares about people and purpose. Dedicated to fostering leadership, culture, and values within an organization that enable collaboration, innovation, and actions to reduce dependency on fossil fuels, mitigate and adapt to climate change and protect and enhance the environment. Proud recipient of the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association Water Steward of the Year Award for 2020! More at WATER CANADA

63rd and Yukon bioswale Photo: Courtesy of City of Vancouver

ON RAINWATER AND RAINCITY STRATEGY

Andrea Valentine-Lewis with Melina Scholefield

The metropolitan city of Vancouver is known for many things: blue glass skylines, urban beach access, proximity to mountains, in addition to heavy rainfall which can be perceived as both a blessing and a curse. Vancouver is the third rainiest city in Canada; we receive 1,189mm (46.8 in) of rain over 161 days per year.

Vancouverites adapt to this wet climate by acquiring waterproof rain slickers, rubber boots, and specialized umbrellas to keep themselves well-insulated and protected; however, few consider where the rainwater goes once it hits the ground.

In an interview on April 7, 2021, the manager of green infrastructure at the City of Vancouver Melina Scholefield provided some chilling facts about Vancouver’s current rainwater collection systems and shared some details about the city’s long-term initiative called the Rain City Strategy, a relatively new project designed to make significant and sustainable changes to urban infrastructure in relation to water collection.

I asked Melina what the Rain City Strategy is and why the City of Vancouver has chosen to pursue this rigorous, long-term project at this time.

Melina Scholefield: The Rain City Strategy is an initiative to rethink or reimagine how we manage rainwater in the city. Really thinking about the role of water in our community planning and our ecological systems, our infrastructure, and how all those different pieces are connected.

Photo courtesy of City of Vancouver

Combined Sewer and Drainage systems.

MS: What got us started was actually a regulatory obligation from the provincial government that asked us to address pollution in our waterways, particularly coming from sewer and drainage systems.

Vancouver has what’s called a “combined sewer system” which means that, in a lot of cases, sewage is combined with the same pipe with the rainwater that falls on rooftops, roadways, and other hard surfaces.

What happens is we often get what is called combined sewer overflows, which means that basically untreated sewage and polluted stormwater are discharging in the waters around the city including Fraser River, English Bay, False Creek. This is concerning not only for public health but also for ecological health.

Rainwater Pollution 

MS: A lot of people feel like the stormwater falling from the sky is clean and it just gets scooped up and into our catch basins into a pipe and sent down to the receiving water.

The significant challenge here is that it’s actually picking up all kinds of contaminants from rooftops and roadways including: heavy metals, tire debris, and hydrocarbons like brake fluid or windshield wiper fluid.

So, stormwater is actually quite polluted when it goes into these pipes and into receiving water bodies causing a lot of impacts, including salmon mortality.

Green Infrastructure 

MS: The Rain City Strategy implements a new tool that has been around for 20 years, but we are working to really advance the use of it and make it a mainstream way that we manage it. This tool is called “green infrastructure.”

The idea is that instead of just collecting that water and putting it into the pipe system and discharging it directly into our local waters – with all the impacts that that has – we are trying to capture it and filter it using soil and plant ecosystems, allowing that water to be absorbed back into the ground, absorbed by the plants, be evaporated, and basically cleaning and/or capturing those pollutants.

THEORY IN ACTION: HINGE PARK: ENGINEERED WETLAND, STORMWATER MANAGEMENT

Hinge Park Wetlands Photo Courtesy of the City of Vancouver

Andrea Valentine-Lewis: Wow. Very cool! What can Vancouverites expect to see with these changes? In other words, does the strategy produce visible results?

MS: Yes! One of the things that’s really exciting about green infrastructure is that it’s very visible and relatable. Sometimes there are cases where you won’t see it; for example, underneath the sidewalk, but there are many examples throughout the city you can actually see and enjoy. Olympic Village has a ton of different examples.

Hinge Park, for example, is entirely green infrastructure, delivering stormwater management. It’s what we call an engineered wetland. It looks and feels like a really nice pond with trees and birds and beavers, and ducks, and all kinds of great landscaping – a little oasis of nature in the heart of the urban environment; but it’s actually managing two-thirds of the stormwater from the adjacent neighbourhood. We collect the water in a network of pipes, which send it to the engineered wetland for treatment before it gets discharged into False Creek.

AVL: I have to say, I find it quite stressful and sometimes debilitating to think about climate change and global warming. How can we, as individuals, make a difference with the Rain City Strategy, perhaps, or even just generally with the health of our city and our planet. Do we have power at all?

MS: Yes, we do! I think what’s motivating for a lot of people is that we have tools to help address some of these complex challenging problems and it requires a whole lot of people to do their part. It requires the city to take leadership and action and look at those areas where we have responsibility for managing infrastructure and streets and how we design things. It is also a rule for us to work with communities and help support and enable them to take action.

MELINA’S TIPS FOR TAKING ACTION AT HOME:

-       Create absorbent spaces on your property (e.g. yard, garden, patio), allowing rainwater to be captured and go back into the ground.

-       Support healthy trees: if your neighbourhood trees have water bags on them, check to see if they need watering, especially if we are going through a really bad drought.

-       Volunteer with the City of Vancouver’s Green Streets program: maintain one of Vancouver’s gardens located in traffic circles and street corners. This enhances public space but also helps manage rainwater and provides habitats for wildlife.

Green Streets Adopted Bioretention bulge, Vancouver Photo: courtesy of City of Vancouver