Infrastructure Management – Integrated Water Cycle Management at Great Lakes Region

One of the biggest issues noted in the Great Lakes area is the fact that it has all been re-engineered for human habitation, which has altered the natural ecosystem of rainwater with the lakes, streams, rivers, and groundwater.

In most of the Great Lakes cities, stormwater, municipal water supply, and wastewater systems are handled independently of one another with separate administration, regulations, and funding sources.

Unfortunately, this has led to the complete isolation of each entity, with no requirement for them to communicate or collaborate.

Gizmodo reports:

“They face a huge challenge; they must re-imagine the very premise on which modern water utilities function, from planning to operations to funding. They must sell the use of “green infrastructure” (using natural systems like plants and soil to treat and manage stormwater) in a culture very much entrenched in using traditional “grey infrastructure” (pipes and concrete storage tanks) to manage water in urban areas.

Their ultimate task: reintegrating the way water systems are managed to capture the efficiencies of the natural water cycle, reducing costs and increasing ecological and economic sustainability and resiliency in the process. The Great Lakes Commission’s Greater Lakes project, funded through the Great Lakes Protection Fund, is designed to help local governments and watershed managers to meet this challenge.”

Some leaders in the field believe that one of the biggest issues that need to be addressed is the underfinancing of Stormwater systems, with perhaps a need for Stormwater fees charged to residents.

Inframanage.com observes that integrated and holistic water cycle management is one of those concepts that is easy to say, but much harder to achieve.  Interagency boundaries make this even harder to achieve, as each agency typically had different mandates, regulations, and funding sources.

Infrastructure management practice over the past two decades has taught us that there are often significant gains to be made through taking a more joined-up and less siloed approach to planning and problem-solving.  This is true within agencies and authorities, as well as with interagency approaches.

Applying this infrastructure management thinking to water cycle management is a practice area where there are potentially still major gains to be made by taking a more joined-up and collaborative approach.

A thought to take away – how can you in your work leverage significant gains by taking a less siloed approach?

PHOTO CREDIT: “Great Lakes from space crop labeled” by SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE; cropped and labeled by Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC) – http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=793. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.