Day 10 (4/6) - The Final Post Perspective

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."  Anais Nin.

It’s good to get perspective, meet with others, be in network and stay fresh even if it is just to understand what others are doing and where they are at.

It’s also good to know your story, understand the why for you and your place.

 

 

Throughout each day of our travel we've tried to share some of this new perspective with you. 

 

 

Along the way we've also met with a lot of pumped, passionate and inspired water people in the Netherlands and Denmark who are industriously innovating and working away at solutions to make cities better. 

 

 

They were infectious with their curiousity and reminded us to always keep gaps and places free in your work and in your life for exploration. 

 

 

Inspired by Dutch tradition, we'd like to turn this blog back towards you and invite you into   dialogue and collaboration and to encourage you to share your own thoughts with us. 

 

 

We think that it's important over the next many months that we get clarity about Seattle's water story. 

 

 

So we want to know what you think: 

 

 

What do you think Seattle's water management and climate adaptation story is? 

 

 

What should we as residents and workers in Seattle care most deeply about?

 

 

Please comment below.

 

 

Dani and Leslie

The past couple of days have been spent meeting with seriously passionate water engineers and innovative teams from the Technical University at Delft Green Village, Deltares, the City of Amsterdam, the AMS Institute, Waternet and Amsterdam Rainproof.  Everyone was focused and excited about their work to improve blue-green technologies and solutions to manage extreme rain and climate change.  Our brains are over-stuffed after 9 non-stop days...but we offer this thought. 

 Day 9 (April 5) - Bike culture - The quintessential blue-green investment

Dutch and Danish peers and professionals shared over and over again how important integrated teams and planning as well as outreach and collaboration were to advancing work in the changing and uncertain space of water management and climate adaptation.  

During site visits we also saw how blue-green infrastructure can take a wide variety of forms from rain gardens to bioswales, from roof gardens to water parks and from dikes to beer.  We've also seen great (and not so great) examples of how blue-green infrastructure solutions can be designed and contribute (or not) to the public realm. 

All the while, we’ve also witnessed the daily bike commute parade. People on bikes dominate at all times of the day, in all types of business attire (suits, dresses, coats, heels, boots, leopard scarves) and in all types of weather and temperatures.  It's simply the way of getting around here and if you aren't paying attention, you'll get run over.  In the Netherlands, the average person cycles 1000 km/year which is the equivalent of cycling to Paris and back each year.  And, they appear to have the slender frames to prove it.

This morning our team mounted ebikes and headed along the Amstel River to meet with colleagues at Waternet.   It was a welcomed treat to spend a good portion of the day moving around outside as opposed to holding up in an office setting.  However, I will admit that I was less than thrilled at being "e-ssisted" in my exercise.   Come on, it's flat in the Netherlands.  The highest point is 37.7m.  Who needs a ebike?  Actually, I quickly learned that e-technology makes biking accessible to almost everyone regardless of fitness, stature or destination.  It can be an equity tool. 

As we made our way through the city dodging the trolley, mopeds and other cyclists, I realized how in the realm of "blue-green infrastructure" bike investments and elimination of vehicle trips are a quintessential blue-green investment. 

Why?  Here are a few reasons bikes need to be an integrated part of the blue-green portfolio. 

By replacing cars, bikes: 

- reduce carbon emissions (and hopefully lessen extreme storm potential);

- reduce the heavy metals and contaminants contributed to roadways that become the key ingredients of stormwater pollution;

- connect people to the outdoors and nature;

- reduce or make more efficient street sweeping operations;

- free up parking spaces providing more opportunity for blue-green spaces. 

 Bikes and blue green water infrastructure are a fine pairing.  In fact, this may be the finest contribution the Dutch and Danish are making in this field.    I think SPU could become fierce advocates for more and especially safer bike ways in Seattle to build the bike culture.  

 

 

 

Day 8 (April 4) - The 5 R's of Water

A One Water paradigm means understanding that, as the US Water Alliance says: Water, in all its forms, is valuable, and our collective future depends on water. Working in drainage, and especially in wastewater, we often think of waste as waste. Our work is typically centered on safely conveying a public health and environmental nuisance. 

As we begin to imagine what One Water means for SPU, I was inspired by our peers from Vancouver to take a page out of Solid Waste’s playbook. In order to change our relationship to garbage, solid waste managers had to get people thinking of their waste as a resource. The framing for that shift was the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Subsequently other Rs have been added or proposed, but essentially, the Rs are about thinking about the natural resources that we depend on in a circular way – and, about rethinking waste…What if we took the “waste” out of wastewater?

The Water Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover and Restore paradigm (adapted from a google search on the 3-Rs):

1. Wherever possible, waste WATER reduction is the preferable option.

(Key water concepts: Conservation, Infiltration, Evapotranspiration)

2. If waste WATER is produced, every effort should be made to reuse it if practicable.

(Key concepts: Rainwater Harvesting and other forms of Building-Scale Non-Potable Reuse)

3. Recycling is the third option in the waste WATER management hierarchy. Although recycling does help to conserve resources and reduce wastes, it is important to remember that there are economic and environmental costs associated with waste WATER collection and recycling. For this reason, recycling should only be considered for waste WATER which cannot be reduced or reused.

(Key concepts: District Scale Non-Potable Reuse)

4. Recover materials or energy from waste WATER which cannot be reduced, reused or recycled.

(Key concepts: Wastewater Resource Recovery such as Sewer Mining)

5. Restore the ecosystems that healthy water systems depend on. 

(Key concepts: pollution prevention, watershed management)

 

 

 Rotterdam

 

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 Regionalism - A Sixth R

Water knows no borders only the boundaries of sheds.

 

Human systems of pipes, pumps and politics confuse that.


Climate change which is happening at bioregion and global level supersedes that.

 

The Dutch and Danish have been clear that managing our water systems and climate issues takes collaboration and working together at micro levels (within departments, between departments, with private/community partners) and macro levels (between regional agencies, governments, nations).

 

There has been considerable talk the past week about how having a bigger plan(s) that every entity can see themselves in and align to around water was crucial. Plans that offer big vision and integrate missions across silos and over long time horizons versus one-off projects and initiatives in specific locations were best practice.

 

This all felt comfortable and logical. So, why the panic when talk turned to needing “new eras of governance” and mindfulness in our management of water. Why both a flutter and then a lump in the throat when they discussed moving beyond government silo to the broader question of “public value management”.

 

Always present was a familiar theme of needing to pilot, practice and learn from failure but different in our face to face discussions with peers was the emergence of words like flexible budgeting, integrated budgeting, and district budgeting.

 

Was your initial reaction to reach for and protect your wallet too?

 

Let me be clear, the emphasis here was that working together also meant sharing budgets. To be sure, the thought is both simultaneously transformative and threatening.

 

Somewhere in here is a truth especially when we think about water’s true nature. Who does have rights? Who does it belong to except to all of us?

 

It would seem that planning and partnering regionally (micro and macro) is an important part of the equation.

 

We need to understand better our future role in that context. Is it the same as it has been or does it need to adapt too?

 

 

 

 

Day 7 (April 3) - Success!

 

We are starting on a journey.

We know what we are looking for,

but we don’t have a map.
When we get there, we will thrive
because we forged the path together.

 

“If you do something, do it together. To do it together, you have to have a plan. When you do it, do it for your grandchildren.” – Jan Vreeburg, Head of Strategy, Evides

Rotterdam succeeded in getting climate adaptation on the agenda and managed to start implementing climate adaptation projects, even without having a disaster. 10 years ago in the Netherlands, water was not mentioned in plans outside of the plans for the surface water management agency. But they shifted from working alone in silos to working together.  The first step was developing the first citywide water plan in 2010. This plan was developed jointly between the surface water agency and the City’s water engineers. For Water Plan 2.0, they added the City’s spatial planners to the team. It took some time for the engineers and designers to figure out how to work together but eventually it yielded integrated solutions and a mutual appreciation for what each field brought to the table. Today, water is mentioned in all 17+ plans that govern the future of the City.

Working together.  That's the secret sauce!

The most elegant solutions are so simple (even when they are not).

When we met with our counterparts in the City of Rotterdam, Evides and the Delft Water Board, we asked them how they built the successful partnerships needed to implement their cross-discipline and cross-sector climate adaptation work.   Here was their recipe:

1. Use an integrated team (bring in multiple disciplines, perspectives, experts).
2. Acknowledge that you need something different (i.e. you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome)
3. Align to shared values.
4. Make room for creativity and innovation.
5. Accept that when you do something new, you may fail.
6. Pilot something, learn from your mistakes, then scale up.
7. Connect your work to your community and get political support.

Success!

With our counterparts from Vancouver BC, we split the Day between the classroom and tours of Rotterdam. In the classroom, we learned about Climate Adaptation Planning and Strategy through a C40 master class. On the tour we visited the Benthem Water Square and the ZoHo Water District.

 Day 6 (April 2) - The Cascade Effect

In the C40 master class we discussed starting resilience planning with an evaluation of a city’s risks associated with climate change. The classic approach to evaluating risk based on impact x probability can be elaborated on by evaluating the cascade effect, which looks beyond the direct impacts to the impacts of the impacts. For example, climate change causes more intense/frequent rain events, which causes more frequent flooding, which causes property damage, which causes businesses to close, which causes a dip in the local economy, which causes people to move, which causes school enrollment to go down…This is a linear example, but in reality, the cascading impacts branch out like a family tree of catastrophe. Looking at potential negative impacts in this way can help us developing a stronger business case by expanding our accounting for the cost of inaction.

Maybe it’s because the Cascades Range is like a bookend for our region and where our drinking water originates, but I don’t like using the word ‘cascade’ to only describe the terrible chain of events that spawns from an initial system shock or a stressor (human steps into a forest and mass extinction ensues!). I think we should reclaim the cascade effect as a term that describes the chain of positive impacts that strategic investments in water and community can have on the Cascadia region.

 Missing Mountains in the Flatlands 

 

  _________________

Chill! Goodwill and Cascadia -  Eureka! We’ve found them. Seattle makes a nice pairing with Vancouver BC when it comes to climate adaptation and one water management issues.

We live in the same bioregion sharing the same climate, the Salish Sea, the J pod and our common future. Our populations, growth patterns and affordability issues have similarities too. Our drinking water comes from pristine mountain reservoirs, our drainage and wastewater is a mix of separated systems and combined sewers and our community’s are surrounded by and connected to the water.

There are differences (political, regulatory, financial, etc) but as civil servants we seem aligned in the values, hopes, and concerns we share for Cascadia.

It’s an easy partnership with a seasoned City Planning Director named Gil (who’s name was mistaken early in the trip for Chill), a thoughtful and gracious Engineering Director with a last name that translates to “goodwill”, and talented, energetic and committed staff - Melina, Wendy and Jimmy. 

Seattle wouldn’t be on this learning exchange if not for their desire to reach across the border, make an invite, do the heavy lifting for a grant and forge a connection. We are indebted and in gratitude to this kindness and foresight. 

 

As peers, our new colleagues will provide us with intellectual companionship and sharing that is important to our region. 

 

In responding to the uncertainty of climate change and the need for innovation, we all need encouragement and perhaps, in the future, a little more friendly competition, aye?

 

My bet is the Seattle rainwater harvest brew.  Either way, it'd be hard to lose.   Go team SPU!

 

 

 

JPod and Salish Sea

 

 

Day 5 (April 1) - A resilience plan that's a resilient plan. 

To develop a plan that increases the resilience of Seattle in the face of climate change, we also need to consider what will make the plan itself resilient. 

What makes our plans unresilient, sitting on the shelf and gathering dust? Two things come to mind based on our tour of projects that were developed from Copenhagen's cloud burst plan. First is changes in leadership or priorities and second is bad timing. 

In Seattle, like many other cities, what could be seen as a high priority for funding and resources at one time, or during one administration can slip down the list when those priorities change. What happens to a plan that focuses on regulatory compliance when the regulations change? What happens to a plan focused on one type of benefit when our politicians or communities stop valuing that benefit? 

The authors of Copenhagen cloudburst plan say that the best way to create a plan with political resilience is to develop an airtight business case showing that the plan delivers the greatest benefit for the lowest cost. The business case for the Copenhagen cloudburst plan had its basis in avoided costs. They used modeling as well as real data on damages from previous flood events to develop a base case that clearly laid out the (very large) cost of inaction. Then they compared the cost of two alternative approaches to avoid those future costs through infrastructure investment. Even without monetizing the other co-benefits, they found the integrated water management, or 'green' infrastructure alternative to be less expensive than the 'grey' infrastructure approach. Both alternatives proved to be less expensive in the long run than the cost of doing nothing. When Copenhagen's political environment shifts, the cloudburst plan presents each new administration with an irrefutable strategy, one that is easy for them to support. 

Of course as a city leader, being able to conceptually support a plan (thanks to a strong business case) doesn't always mean that you'll also get support from your community needed to fund implementation. In this regard, the cloudburst plan took advantage of timing. 

Copenhagen first started cloudburst planning after a particularly damaging cloudburst storm. They started with a framework and overall business case, as well as prioritizing areas to start more detailed planning and design. Then, they experienced another cloudburst storm. With the plan on-hand, they got the green light to develop the first set of cloudburst managent projects. Those projects are now complete, making up our itinerary over the last few days. 

Ulrick, our tour guide in Kokkedal mentioned that they have not experienced a cloudburst since then and have started to see the funding for future projects dry up, just like the weather. However, next time they have a big storm, they will have their plan ready to take advantage of the following 6 months when everyone wants to see action. 

While I hope that in Seattle we will have the foresight to build resilience before disaster strikes, I also see the importance of having a plan on hand that helps our community and leaders turn a disaster into an opportunity. A plan that has proven to be a cost effective approach to improving resilience and avoiding future costs, one that can weather shifting priorities and provide a roadmap in a time of crisis, is a resilient plan. 
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Tilting at Windmills...except the ones here are the original pump stations.

It stung. She leaned in and took another one on the chin. “Green veneer, x*#x!” Sigh. Always a struggle. It was exhausting.

Why did green infrastructure conversations seemingly end with concerns about added cost and exacting performance standards? What about avoided cost? Whole systems? Ecosystem services?

Climate change isn’t going to wait. How then, can we? We learned with Windermere that weather and with it the target condition changed. With that dynamic, should we rely solely on solutions that are cast in concrete?

Even Don Quixote gave pause in the charge.

What is the problem we are solving for? What are our community’s broadest aspirations and values? Is it to meet the narrow yoke of inflexible regulation and spend money in invisible ways? Or would the ask be to integrate and align with as many community values as possible...to be more creative?

Ironically, being creative may not mean new. In fact, innovation probably finds precedence in some of the oldest systems on earth...nature. To innovate, we need to be aware of older forms (old Venetian water plazas) and newer forms (Rotterdam’s Bentham water square) and the true stories and data from both their successes and failures.

Then, we need to charge forward with a balanced “no regrets” portfolio that blends the proven alongside continued investments in practice.  Since 1270, the civil engineers in Rotterdam have been living with water in a country that is now 1/3 below sea level.  They've had plenty of practice, plenty of success and plenty of failures.  Their advice for us today:  1) invest in a large scale in small scale solutions; and 2) build with nature...use ecosystem services. 

 

Day 4 (March 31) - A Culture of Learning 

When people started designing the infrastructure in Orestad, a greenfield development on the southern edge of Copenhagen, they knew they wanted to create a neighborhood with stormwater as its backbone. Climate change was gaining acceptance, but no one knew exactly what to expect and when to expect it. There was no data to inform decisions about how to design a neighborhood with a stormwater system that could adapt to a changing climate, but they suspected that the future would bring more frequent, and more intense rain. 

They decided to embrace the uncertainty. They picked a number - 25% increase in intensity - as an informed guess and as a preliminary design standard. And, they committed to try it out and change it as they learned. They designed the first phase of the project using this standard and have adjusted it through each subsequent phase, learning and adapting as they go.

Our Orestad tour guide, Thomas, said that learning and adapting is deeply engrained in Danish culture. He went on to say that Danish people are naturally distrustful of authority and this means that they are always looking for a new way to do something - a way that is different from what they were told to do. 

We are in a time of rapid growth and learning as we move from a static to a dynamic understanding of the future. In the face of climate change, we all need to nurture a culture of learning. Trying out new approaches and learning from them is better than doing nothing. It can be healthy to question authority. 

 King Christian X

 

King Christian X was a bad ass. During Nazi occupation he refused to flee his country and showed solidarity by riding out into the streets of Copenhagen most days and fending off the Nazi’s anti-Jewish legislation.  He was exercising that Question Authority culture.

To honor this tradition, calls us to look critically at Danish water management approaches (no matter how wonderfully human scaled and future focused they are) and think about Seattle’s context. Obligingly, here are a two modifications worthy of consideration:

Hard Edges - Functionally designed to direct flows, protect property and satisfy the clean linearity of SCAN design aesthetic, the hard edges of green infrastructure in the Oestrud and Kokkedal projects leave little room for natural habitat.  Human scale is primary with beckoning places to sit and observe.  Neighbors complained about the edges and the poor ducks...the baby ducks couldn't climb out. It's certain the Danes could engineer some brilliant plank rightly spaced for duck feet and nesting. Hygge design ingenuity truly permeates here.

But, when we asked about riparian edge and habitat we were less than satisfied (and frankly so were our hosts) with the response. For now, it’s an optional layer in program costs. It only enters the equation when it’s politically “hot” and hotness cycles every 4, 8, 12 years. The projects we saw are green and they are sustainable but there is room for fuller interweaving of ecosystem services functions.

Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance - Apparently, the Danes haven’t solved for this either and it’s a problem. We heard a lot about what the City or Utility was supposed to be doing now that things had been built...replacing filters, cleaning forebays....but, had that happened? This question seemed to be followed by pause, hopefulness, nervous laughter and a sprinkle of doubt.

The projects we saw were new. So, it's fair to ask, how will they stand the test of time? In Kokkedal’s low income public housing neighborhood that wasn’t clear. Maintenance appeared to be waning, and no, they hadn’t quite worked through how they might employee local residents in that work.  They had thought about it though.  Sound familiar.

The Danes are strong practictioners and international exporters of “cloudburst climate adaptation”, “blue-green infrastructure”, and “living with water” approaches.   It’s a pioneering, sustainability business model that is working well for them and will work well for all of us on the planet.  Together, those in shared practice need to keep pushing each other to come “fuller circle” by including habitat and the development of local maintenance economy in our approaches. 

 

 

 

Day 3 (March 30) - Elegance is Knowing When To Stop.

 

Here is another story from St. Annie's Plads. This street was selected for a climate resilience project because when Copenhagen had a 1000+ year storm (a 'cloudburst'), it flooded really, really badly. This area of Copenhagen is home to both many basements and many art galleries. After the cloudburst, there were insurance claims for over $1 billion USD. 

The project was designed to keep the more frequent storms safely below the surface in the combined system, but in the event a 100 year storm, surface flooding would be concentrated in the middle of St. Annie's Plads, and only be up to 10cm deep (~4 inches) at the building facades. In other words, now that the project is complete, they expect that next time it rains really, really hard, water should flow down the middle of the plaza like a slow river with shallow water on the sides where it is still safe to walk or drive.

As with all projects, there is a low point. In St. Annie's Plads, the low point is at a corner in front of a building. On that corner, there is an entrance to a restaurant that is located in the basement of the building. The designers worked hard to develop a design that would protect the building on this corner to the same level as the rest of the project area. When the cost estimates came in, the added infrastructure needed to solve for the low point was $1 million additional USD. The team decided the most elegant thing to do was save the money for the project as a whole and create a site specific solution for the low point. They warped the paving up around the entrance to the restaurant, creating a berm that will keep flood waters out up to the 100 year storm (see picture). 

Sometimes providing the same level of service doesn't look the same for every customer. Sometimes elegance is knowing when to stop. 

 

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Child’s play - Alongside the utilitarian of pipes, ponds, pumps and protection at Tåsinge Plads and other water management projects around Copenhagen we can also find:

A teeter to totter...that also operates a water pump.

A hill to climb...that keeps excavations on site and infrastructure less visible.

An invitation to sunbath...that shares space with a hatch.

A hole to explore...that also conveys flows.

And a place to bounce...that could go...?

Impact doesn’t take much...just the ability to ask and see. That work takes intentionality and practice.

 
A grand gesture isn’t the only way to convey multiple benefit...small acts and simple details are enough. That work takes care and focus.

 

     Teeter to Totter      Hill to Climb

Invitation to Sunbathe    Hole to ExplorePlace to Bounce