Towards sustainable urban water management: A critical reassessment

The many societal benefits provided by traditional, centralised urban water servicing models are being re-examined following recent extreme weather events, climate uncertainty and other variable socio-technical trends. Total water cycle management offers a more flexible and resilient approach to urban water management, however, transformative change in the sector is difficult. A growing number of scholars have identified that the urban water sector is locked-in to the current large-scale, centralised infrastructure model and suggest the sector is unable to accommodate new technologies and management approaches beyond niche projects. Based on extensive socio-institutional research and example cases from Australian and United Kingdom experiences managing urban water under pressures such as modern environmentalism, prolonged water scarcity and sewerage overflows, this paper provides a commentary on common factors exhibited in both countries related to technological path dependency. Three key factors promoting this pathway: political risk, professional agency fear and a lack of a hybrid governance approach are discussed and a future scholarly research agenda is presented.

Political and Professional Agency Entrapment: An Agenda for Urban Water Research

Understanding the nature of publics and local policy commitment to Water Sensitive Urban Design

Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) is a concept that is gaining support as a means to manage urban water systems in an integrated way through the better positioning of the topic of water in urban planning and design processes. Water-sensitive urban design is emerging in the UK and this paper sets the scene and identifies the opportunities and constraints from a UK perspective. Recent developments in integrated water management, ecosystem services and multifunctional land use provide new opportunities for 'getting more for less'. These can range from seeing all forms of water as a resource, exploiting opportunities to contribute to the green and blue infrastructure agendas, resilience to climate and other changes. This paper draws on international experience as to how water-sensitive urban design can deliver opportunities; mitigate the urban development challenges; implement and support institutional, regulatory and practical opportunities and demonstrate the benefits of taking a water-sensitive urban design approach in the UK. The key requirements for delivery are highlighted and a proposed vision for water-sensitive urban design in the UK outlined. © ICE Publishing: All rights reserved.

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Water-sensitive urban design: Opportunities for the UK

Feature pubs.acs.org/est Adapting Urban Water Systems to a Changing Climate: Lessons from the Millennium Drought in Southeast Australia Stanley B. Grant,* ,†,‡ Tim D. Fletcher, ⊥ David Feldman, § Jean-Daniel Saphores, †,§ Perran L. M. Cook, # Mike Stewardson, ‡ Kathleen Low, † Kristal Burry, ∇ and Andrew J. Hamilton ∥ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, E4130 Engineering Gateway, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California 92697-2175, United States Department of Infrastructure Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering, Engineering Block D, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, 300G Social Ecology I, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California 92697-7075, United States Department of Agriculture and Food Systems, The University of Melbourne, 940 Dookie−Nalinga Road, Dookie College, Victoria 3647, Australia Melbourne School of Land and Environment, The University of Melbourne, Burnley Campus, 500 Yarra Boulevard, Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia Water Studies Centre, School of Chemistry, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia Melbourne School of Land and Environment, The University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus, 207 Bouverie Street, Victoria 3052, Australia the way Melburnians source and use their water resources and discuss what these changes may portend for other large cities in water-scarce and climate-change-vulnerable regions of the world, in particular, the Southwest region of the United States. MELBOURNE’S WATER SUPPLY Melbourne sources most of its water from protected stream catchments located in uninhabited mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forests to the north and northeast of the city (Figure 1). Runoﬀ from these protected catchments ﬂows by gravity into ten harvesting reservoirs and, from there, through a network of aqueducts and pipelines to storage reservoirs where it is distributed, after minimal treatment, to local service reservoirs. Since the ﬁrst harvesting reservoir was built in the mid-1800s, Melbourne’s protected catchments have provided the city with a safe, low-energy, and mostly reliable source of high quality drinking water. However, they have also left the city vulnerable to water shortages during periods of very low precipitation. 5 To buﬀer against water shortages, Melbourne recently invested in various water supply augmentation schemes, including an interbasin transfer pipeline (the North−South or Sugarloaf Pipeline) and the largest desalination plant in the Southern Hemisphere (the Wonthaggi Desalination Plant) (Figure 1). These two projects were built at a capital cost of approximately AU$700 million 6 and AU$6 billion, 7 respec- tively, and can deliver annually up to 75 and 150 GL of water to Melbourne; combined, that equates to about 40% of the city’s present day municipal water demand. However, since their completion in 2010 (Sugarloaf Pipeline) and 2012 (Wonthaggi Desalination Plant), neither A LONG HISTORY OF DROUGHT IN MELBOURNE Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent, and its population is one of the most urban. As of 2010, 89% of Australia’s 21 million inhabitants lived in urban areas. 1 Finding adequate water resources to sustain Australia’s cities is an ongoing challenge. 2 Nowhere is that more apparent than in Melbourne, a coastal city of approximately 4 million people located on the country’s southeastern coast. Over its 166-year history, Melbourne has experienced eight major droughts. The most recent one, known as the Millennium Drought, started in 1997 and lasted more than a decade. By 2009, below-average precipitation and above-average temperatures drained the city’s drinking-water reservoirs and stoked bush ﬁres, including the “Black Saturday” ﬁre that damaged 30% of the city’s water supply catchment and claimed 173 lives. 3 The Millennium Drought also altered public perceptions about global climate change, water conservation, and water-use behaviors, and energized city managers and politicians to adopt a wide range of approaches for augmenting water supplies and conserving water resources, although the contribution of climate change to the Millennium drought, while plausible, remains unproven. 4 In this paper, we explore how the Millennium Drought changed © 2013 American Chemical Society Special Issue: Design Options for More Sustainable Urban Water Environment Published: May 3, 2013 dx.doi.org/10.1021/es400618z | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013, 47, 10727−10734

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Adapting urban water systems to a changing climate: lessons from the millennium drought in southeast Australia.

Ecologically Sustainable Development in Australia can be described as going beyond the protection of the environment from the impacts of pollution, to protecting and conserving natural resources. In an urban environmental context this means urban development (both greenfield development and urban renewal) that seeks to have no long term effects on various aspects of the environment related to aspects such as greenhouse gas levels, material resources, biodiversity and ambient water environments. Water environments, such as waterways and coastal waters, and water supply catchments are key areas where urban development can have significant impacts. Water Sensitive Urban Design in Australia has evolved from its early association with stormwater management to provide a broader framework for sustainable urban water management. It provides a common and unified method for integrating the interactions between the urban built form (including urban landscapes) and the urban water cycle. This paper presents an overview of current industry practice and research implementation of Water Sensitive Urban Design in Australia.

T. H. F. Wong

Papers

An Overview of Water Sensitive Urban Design Practices in Australia