Jim Van Rassel on the decision of five Coquitlam city councillors to abandon environmentally sustainable LID program:

It is my opinion that the five councillors involved in removing the LID program are either stupid, ignorant of the facts, or in someone's hip pocket."

Glen P. Robbins states his position this way:

It is my opinion that councillors Lou Sekora, Mae Reid, Richard Stewart, and the two other guys "did not make a serious attempt to avail themselves of the facts and other information pertinent to what would normally be expected of an elected official, and as a consequence moved hastily to what could only be described as an erroneous conclusion that will harm Burke Mountain in Coquitlam until perpetuity."

Commentary

Here are two letters as this relates to our ROBBINS LID discussion (see Canada polls). One is from an engineer with expertise in these matters in Olympia, Washington and another is from an expert at UBC who points out that we already have a shining example of LID success at Glen P. Robbins Alma mater, Simon Fraser University in Burnaby British Columbia.

First, from Thomas Holz in Olympia Washington

Re: "Environmentally friendly measures removed from northeast Coquitlam development," Wednesday, May 9.

It is sad to see that the City of Coquitlam council voted to rescind the low-impact development standards for the proposed Burke Mountain project in favour of a high-impact, high-rainwater runoff project.

Scientific literature has described in detail what rainwater runoff from high impact development does to streams and habitat. Scouring, landslides, erosion and sedimentation are the visible impacts of urban runoff.

The destruction of species intolerant of pollution and the demise of salmon runs and other aquatic life are less visible effects of runoff; but the losses are equally mourned.

In North America, jurisdictions are adopting low impact development techniques. The Washington cities of Lacey, Tumwater and Langley and Pierce County encourage low- impact development.

Seattle is well on its way to retrofitting the Piper Creek watershed with bioretention facilities. Meanwhile, Portland, Ore., is claiming the title of the leader in green street development.

In Maryland, low impact development techniques will be mandatory everywhere in the state.

Yet with all the evidence, Coquitlam council has chosen to lead the charge to the rear.

By rescinding the requirement for low impact development, councillors have decided to avoid a small risk in favour of guaranteed failure.

Second from Patrick M. Condon from UBC

By a margin of only one vote, Coquitlam city council voted to eliminate low-impact development requirements in the northeast sector, an area large enough to accommodate more than 20,000 new homes. What a great tragedy.

Coquitlam has long been admired throughout the region, even across the nation, for its integrated planning of this important new community. Some of the best minds in the region created a sustainable framework for this development, one that would ensure that development would enhance the city and its natural treasures, not degrade them.

The plan was admired for its commitment to walkability and health, for accommodating and serving many family types and, most importantly, for its commitment to protecting the natural systems of the site - its salmon streams most important among them.

This last objective was to be achieved through the development and management strategy widely known as low-impact development, or LID.

Disappointingly,Ecouncil voted to throw away 15 years of leadership, claiming that low-impact development was too expensive and too risky. Instead, councillors voted to use the same old failed systems, systems that inevitably and irrefutably destroy streams and the fish in them.

This is all the more disappointing now since there are so many working examples of LID systems in our region. The City of Surrey has had working systems at its East Clayton sustainable community since 2002, and intends to expand the use of low-impact development to the whole city. The UniverCity Project at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby uses low-impact development strategies, and has been enormously successful in both financial and ecological terms. Both the East Clayton and the SFU projects have brought international acclaim to their host cities and, not insignificantly, increased buyer demand for the housing there. Home buyers are desperate to make sustainable decisions about where they live, as they look for an affordable way to leave a positive legacy for their families.

But the five members of council who voted to abandon 15 years of progress did have a point. Coquitlam's LID standards were overly prescriptive, leaving little or no room to adapt to local circumstances, making them an easy target for opponents. The region's most successful applications of LID, East Clayton and SFU in particular, were the result of creative collaboration between developers and municipal officials. When working with natural systems, creativity and site specific responses are called for.

A one-size-fits-all standard won't work. Replacing existing standardization with inflexible and more expensive "green" standards is unsustainable.

We are already spending too much money on urban infrastructure - sustainable solutions should cost less, not more, than the ones they replace. Working with natural systems holds the promise of producing significant gains in ecological performance and cost savings, but only if the temptation to impose one-size-fits-all expensive standards is avoided.

Sadly, it seems that the baby has been thrown out with the stormwater. Perhaps the only way to salvage the situation is to start over in an atmosphere of collaboration. Land owners, developers, city officials and, most of all, citizens want to leave a positive legacy for their children.

We hope that it is not too late for Coquitlam and its citizens to regain the mantle of environmental leadership that they have temporarily dropped.

Patrick M. Condon is a professor at the University of B.C. in landscape and livable environments.

Both Mr. Holz and Mr. Condon have no relationship to either Glen P. Robbins, ROBBINS Sce Research (1998), ROBBINS ASK, ROBBINS MediaWorks, Jim Van Rassel, New Trend Optical or any of their nominees or assigns. At publishing, ROBBINS has not asked permission to reproduce this material, and has taken said material from the World Wide web, specifically sourced from the Coquitlam Now newspaper, a newspaper which cover three cities in the region, namely Port Moody, Coquitlam, and Port Coquitlam (Anmore, Belcarra).

Any comments featured are those of individuals or groups related to ROBBINS exclusively and are not the opinions of the author of the two letters reproduced herein.