Water sensitive urban design on the line

Urban stormwater management is now mainstream practice across Australia, however we are struggling to realise the broader benefits that can be achieved from a water sensitive urban design approach. Local government and industry are now so frustrated at examples of poorly integrated stormwater infrastructure, that alternatives are being sought to manage the impacts of urbanisation on our waterways. In this paper, we explore a unique perspective on two apparently competing themes; that of encouraging best practice stormwater management within new development within our growing cities and towns and the counter, whereby stormwater is managed to deliver water quality outcomes, in off-site locations (aka stormwater offsets). Two recent initiatives are helping government and industry to grapple with the complexity of these decisions. On one hand, the Living Waterways approach is site-driven and focuses on aligning the principles of water sensitive urban design with policy requirements for urban stormwater management. It encourages the recognition that all sites have the potential to contribute to a community's health and wellbeing. On the other, we conducted a detailed situational analysis of on-site and off-site actions. The analysis shows that off-site actions are only sometimes more cost effective than actions undertaken on development sites; and that the most cost effective actions are those that involve avoiding changes to stormwater hydrology in the first place. The future of urban water management will require consideration of both on- and off-site stormwater management practices to achieve desired environmental and liveability outcomes and these projects will play a part in seeing this balance realised.