WSUD Program Projects

The Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority via the WSUD Program will continue to advocate at the Local, State and Federal Government levels for the incorporation of External Institutional Rules and Incentives that drive the adoption of WSUD.Furthermore, the Program, through its Partners and stakeholder networks will continually strive to collectively raise the profile of WSUD and it’s environmental, social and economic benefits amongst policy makers within all levels of government.

Funded by the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority as a function of their in-kind contribution to the WSUD Program. The guideline would act as a bridging document providing a regional context to the South East Queensland’s Water by Design Program’s suite of WSUD Guidelines that assist practitioners with the planning, design and construction of WSUD elements.

Awarded to Equatica, the tender process will be facilitated in two phases with the first phase commencing in March 2010, the two resulting documents were loaded onto the Tools and Resources page of this website in July 2010.

Phase 2 will commence once Water by Design revise the WSUD Technical Design Guidelines for South East Queensland and release the WSUD Asset Mangement Guideline late in 2011/12.

Seeking to increase the skills and knowledge of individuals implementing WSUD, the Technical Training Program will involve the development of training modules and where possible, licensing (and review to ensure regional contexts are considered) of modules developed by the water sector.

Events, once scheduled will be promoted via monthly Newsletters and recorded on the Internal Events and Training page of this website.

All events will be coordinated and event managed inhouse and by the Sydney Metropolitan CMA.

The Capacity Workshops seek to address key regional knowledge gaps identified by the Sydney Metropolitan CMA. The Workshops will compliment the Technical Training Program.

Events will be promoted via monthly Newsletters and recorded on the Internal Events and Training page of this website.

All events will be coordinated and event managed inhouse and by the Sydney Metropolitan CMA.

The WSUD Program commenced the development of a project scope with Andre Taylor in April 2010 to deliver a Champion development tool that assists Senior Managers and individual practitioners in developing Organisational and Project Champions.

Pending the availability of appropriate resources, the project scope would be revised and delivered in 2011/12. Additional project development and delivery partners (including funding) may also be sought.

Underpinned, by Andre’s PHD findings and detailed in the Industry Report – Leadership in Sustainable Urban Water Management – An Investigation of the Champion Phenomenon Within Australian Water Agencies, the resource would be seed funded by the Sydney Metropolitan CMA, housed on the WSUD Program website and made freely available.

Cities as Water Supply Catchments is a 5 year National research program led by Professor Tony Wong with a research team gathered from three leading Australian Universities: Monash University, University of Queensland, and University of Melbourne.

Refer to the Cities as Water Supply Catchments page of this website to learn more about the Research Program and how you can benefit as a member of the Sydney Metropolitan Consortium.

Alternatively, you may also like to learn about the proposed next phase of the research Program, the Water Sensitive Cities CRC and how you could become an Industry Partner.

Sydney Water, the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority, the Federal Government and Canterbury City Council have partnered to construct a new off-line wetland at Cup and Saucer Creek. The wetland is the first stage in Sydney Water’s $8 million project to naturalise the banks of the Cooks River.

Jointly funded by the Sydney Metropolitan CMA and Sydney Water, a time lapse camera will record the construction and establishment of the wetland. This footage will be made available late in 2011via the WSUD Program Website as an educational resource to promote best practice WSUD and encourage similar projects.

The Council Needs Analysis builds on best practice social and technical research and other investigations into local government capacity towards sustainable urban water management. This initiative provides a pro-active support framework for Sydney Metropolitan councils to achieve the adoption of an “ideal” WSUD policy and planning framework.

The WSUD Program would provide strategic advice and solutions to councils with a view to encouraging the uptake of WSUD by the organisation. Housed on this website, a knowledge base of best practice council policies, procedures, lessons learnt, information, tools and resources (permission dependent) would also be developed.

Outputs would provide individual council and regional snapshots of knowledge gaps, deficiencies and capacity building needs. Individually, results may inform future council planning and associated initiatives.

The vision for the Geographical Information Systems Register is to showcase the uptake of WSUD infrastructure by councils while encouraging the sharing of information between councils, research institutions and industry.

Refer to the GIS Register page of this website. Once you access the actual register, please also ensure that you read the ‘Getting Started’ directions from the white and green tab beneath the icons on the left hand side of the screen shot.

Stakeholder interviews from the Independent Review (funded by the Sydney Metropolitan CMA and NSW Stormwater Trust), WSUD: A Sydney Metropolitan Regional Review and Evaluation; returned that councils sought information (among others) to bridge knowledge gaps regarding the impact of Climate Change on On Site Detention, floodplain and general stormwater management projects and infrastructure.

The Sydney Metropolitan CMA’s Stormwater Program in conjunction with the WSUD Program is currently developing a two staged project, with commencement likely May 2010:

• Stage 1: A literature review of current impacts and recommended design practices, including recommendations of best practice and design and management strategies to overcome climate change implications by 2030 and 2070 – completed;
• Stage 2: Ground truthing literature review findings with a number of existing stormwater and floodplain computer models as well as reviewing a number of existing On Site Detention structures – pending.

Outcomes will be communicated via the Climate Change page of this website.

Developed in an easy to use, self explanatory format, both products were identified as critical regional capacity building web based tools by Program stakeholders.Funded by the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority’s in-kind contribution to the WSUD Program, both tools would provide a general introduction to the principles of urban development and WSUD. The tools were uploaded in December 2009 to the Tools and Resources page of this website.

The lack of a comprehensive database; compendium of costing information; supporting modelling tools or guidelines (exception of MUSIC) for life cycle cost generation and analysis has contributed to disparate and inconsistent approaches by councils and developers.

The aim of this National project, which was generated and seed funded by the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority is to set and promote Life Cycle Costing parameters and acquire and house regionally specific and clustered data sets centrally that would be made freely available to practitioners.

Refer to the Operation and Maintenance Page of this website for further information.

Local Council Technical Committee’s will be established on a project-to-project basis to oversee the development and delivery (including technical advice) of WSUD Program Projects. Ensuring applicability to regional local councils needs.

The Technical Committee’s would meet as required:

• Review and confirm WSUD Program objectives;
• Provide strategic direction to the Program based on Council Needs Analysis and Online Capacity Tool benchmarking results;
• Oversee the direction and outcomes of the WSUD Program;
• Provide advice on the development and content of wsud.org;
• Peer review the development of the Regional WSUD Strategic Plan (4 years).

The monthly Newsletter is distributed via email to about 1,200 subscribers Australia-wide and has been a regular feature of the WSUD Program since its inception in 2004. Identifying local information and resources, as well as knowledge sharing, training and grant opportunities; the Newsletter is forwarded on or about the 15^th of 10 months per year.

Refer to the Newsletter page of this website to read the latest and/or previous and archived editions.

The Online Institutional Capacity Building Tool, once developed would incorporate social research findings from Monash University’s National Urban Water Governance program and the organisational profiling component of the Cooks River Sustainability Initiatives being conducted by Monash University’s, Annette Bos as a function of her PHD Developing Effective Urban Water Governance.

Providing an apples-to-apples comparison, the tool’s data-set would enable practitioner’s to benchmark their council’s capacity against previous years and (confidentially) others within the region.

The tool also has potential to provide an opportunity to inform State and Federal initiatives if the tool’s usage were adopted and replicated within other metropolitan and regional cities.

Due to resourcing restrictions, this project has not commenced as at September 2011.

The Lower Georges River Sustainability Initiative contracted Andre Taylor, author of the Industry Report Leadership in Sustainable Urban Water Management: An Investigation of the Champion Phenomenon within Australian Water Agencies to conduct a series of group and individual council workshops aimed at building institutional capacity for participating councils.

An independent critical review by University of Technology Sydney’s Institute of Sustainable Futures (funded by the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority), and additional practitioner focussed reviews and trials were used to ensure the workshops and tools could be replicated across the region.

The products developed as a function of this project were made available in June 2010 via the Tools and Resources Page of this website.

The revised format of the Sustainable Water Challenge endeavours to translate best management practice via multidisciplinary teams into on-ground works, while building cross sectoral linkages in parallel with individual, organisational and regional capacity. Addressing identified practitioner needs and preferences, it is based on the WSUD Program’s Sustainable Water Challenge employed in 2003 and before it involved into an awards and seminar program only.

This model has sufficient scope to allow for regionally specific stakeholder developmental needs and the preferred objectives and outcomes of participating organisations.

Pending availability of resources, the WSUD Program would investigate external funding opportunities to hold the event in 2011/12.

Click here to learn more about the proposed project development and associated options.

Incentives for WSUD seek to enable the uptake of WSUD elements on existing allotments and in retrofit situations. A number of councils and organisations have developed WSUD incentives relating to rainwater tank installation and stormwater treatment systems.

Including: rebates for rainwater tanks and water efficiency initiatives, free education seminars, bank loans or discounts on WSUD elements, preferred suppliers, site visits to allotments with WSUD and on-site construction advice.

Finalised in early March 2010, project outputs, including case studies were uploaded to the Tools and Resources page of this website.

The Sydney Metropolitan CMA, Blacktown Council and the Stormwater Industry Assocation of NSW have formed a Consortium to develop, deliver and promote “typical drawings” for the design of strormwater treatment systems suitable for their local conditions. Including:

• Retrofit situations;
• Limited space and potential conflict with services and other constraints;
• Topography ranging from flat to steep;
• Soils ranging from sandy to clayey, sometimes saline or acidic.

Tendered by Equatica and peer reviewed by Brown Consulting, the drawings will illustrate the key features of the treatment system, giving typical dimensions and specifications, but also showing where variation is possible. Councils can vary the drawings to suit their own needs (for example, to fit with their standard street furniture or paving). Standard Drawings will include the following and will be made available via the Tools and Resources Page of this website in September 2011:

• Miscellaneous construction considerations (eg. design, construction and reference specifications);
• Simple bioretention system (e.g. in a park or landscaped area);
• Bioretention system for a steep site (where a retaining wall is required);
• Bioretention system in footpath (e.g. as a street tree or garden bed);
• Bioretention system in roadway (e.g. as a traffic calming device);
• Standard swale;
• Swale for steep sites.