Engagement

People matter for green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) design—community engagement and buy-in is vital for success

Overview

Community engagement occurs at every step of the design process. Engagement increases green stormwater infrastructure success by ensuring projects are aligned with community preferences, existing conditions, and community capacity. During engagement, factors may be identified that need to be addressed prior to moving forward. Determining the level of commitment to GSI and understanding existing stormwater management systems provide a foundation for developing community-based goals and priorities. From there, community members, university extension specialists, and researchers can engage in ongoing collaborations to incorporate university research into GSI.

Outcomes

As a result of engagement, GSI design process participants (see Who might be involved?) will  feel part of the project team, understand the scope of work, and agree on project goals. The team’s investment in the project will lead to ongoing community commitment, participation, and maintenance.

Recommended Involvement

The below offers broad recommendations for who might be involved in engagement. As always, evaluate participation in accordance with your specific project.

Community engagement can play a pivotal role in green stormwater infrastructure, increasing success by ensuring projects are aligned with community preferences, existing conditions, and community capacity. Community engagement occurs at every step of the design process. Harnessing local knowledge can benefit all stages of GSI Design, from understanding lived on-the-ground flooding experiences to site location decisions and involvement in long-term maintenance.

Community engagement includes working with project stakeholders to establish ongoing engagement at each step of the green stormwater infrastructure design process. Initial community engagement includes:

    • Identifying who needs to be involved
    • Convening the kickoff meeting
    • Deciding on the engagement method, activities, and timetable, and
    • Setting the project goals, objectives, and priorities

Some foundational tasks benefit from robust community engagement, including:

    • Assessing community capacity—such as commitment to and capacity for GSI planning, implementation, and maintenance—and
    • Conducting an existing conditions analysis

    For an example assessment of community capacity, see Municipal Capacity

It is important to gather the necessary experts in all sorts of skills to allow for input in GSI design. Engagement skills include communicating, convening, meeting planning, and facilitating. Successful engagement also includes the ability to listen, make connections, build trust, establish relationships, and garner commitment, plus a willingness to respect local knowledge and defer final decisions to the community.

In the initial stages of green stormwater infrastructure design, it’s beneficial to involve landscape architects, mapping and Geographical Information System (GIS) experts when representing information visually, rendering GSI plans and site designs; and hydrology, engineering, and stormwater and/or flood management experts can help with understanding current and potential future stormwater management conditions.

If additional soils investigations are going to take place, involving soil scientists in community engagement can be beneficial to understand the best locations for soils sampling, coordinate soils sampling logistics, serve as resources to any soils education activities that will be concurrent with the project, and present and discuss soils research results with the GSI Design process participants.

Potentially, all GSI design process participants can be involved in community engagement (see Who might be Involved in GSI Design?).

Because stormwater management program authority is granted to local governments by the State of Illinois, involving representatives from local government is critical to green stormwater infrastructure design and planning. This includes involving all units of local government (township, county, municipality, conservation district, watershed district, watershed management organization, or other public entity) that have  permitting authority. Important to the design process is a familiarity with county stormwater ordinances and associated GSI design manuals (in the counties for which the State of Illinois has granted the authority to develop them) as well as with municipal ordinances. In the initial stage of the GSI design process, local government involvement is critical in assessing the capacity to engage in GSI design and to describing existing conditions. Representatives from economic and community development departments, county and municipal engineers, and others are typically granted oversight for administering local government stormwater ordinances and programs.

To learn more about the stormwater management authority of local government, see Illinois regulations.

Tasks

Community engagement questions to ask include:

  • What is the existing community engagement process?
  • Are community members willing and do they have the capacity to participate in engagement?
  • Have the stakeholders who should be participating in this process been adequately determined?
  • What are the existing attitudes, knowledge, and perceptions of green infrastructure (of both residents and local elected officials)?
  • What are any existing efforts to educate, inform, and engage community members about flooding issues and potential solutions?
  • What is the level of trust between residents and local government?
  • Are there efforts to inform green stormwater infrastructure situating (considering social dimensions) and not just GSI siting (considering the technical dimensions)?
  • Does the community recognize the commitment to long-term GSI maintenance?

Community-defined goal setting questions to ask include:

  • Are there existing green stormwater infrastructure program goals and objectives? If so:
  • Are these goals and objectives defined both quantitatively and qualitatively?
  • Were they developed with adequate community engagement and stakeholder input?
  • Which performance metrics are most important? Performance metrics to consider include:
    • Sewer inflow volume
    • Storage and conveyance capacity restored or added to system
    • Peak wet weather flows at key system locations
    • Basement flooding risk
    • Basement flooding severity
    • Economic value of basement flooding damages
    • Combined sewer overflow (CSO) risk
    • CSO volume
    • CSO activations
    • Decreased nutrient loading
    • Funding deployed for infrastructure
    • Green infrastructure acreage implemented in the system
    • Impervious acreage managed by green infrastructure in the system
    • Ecosystem benefits
    • Recreational benefits on waterways

Existing condition inventory questions to ask include:

  • What is the system type (combined or separate)?
  • Is there an existing sewer atlas?
  • Are any parts of the system missing from the sewer atlas?
  • Are there existing sewer or stormwater models?
  • What are the applicable regulations (standards or design guidance) and ordinances (stormwater, zoning, subdivision, landscaping, or development)?
  • What is the status of existing stormwater and green infrastructure plans, as well as any plans referencing green stormwater infrastructure (comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, development regulations, capital improvements programs, watershed plans, sub-area/corridor/downtown plans, open/public space plans, or zoning/land use)?
  • What is the status of any green stormwater infrastructure inventories (including GSI demonstration programs)?
  • What is the state of historic and current hydrology knowledge?
  • Is there a stormwater utility or other source of dedicated revenue?
  • Are current and past stormwater planning efforts and approaches aligned?

Community capacity questions to ask include:

  • What is the extent of the commitment of municipal leadership to green stormwater infrastructure?
  • What is the community capacity for GSI planning, implementation, and maintenance, including: staff time, knowledge, and expertise; past, present, and anticipated partnerships with external entities; and funding or financial support?
  • Is expertise needed beyond the capacity of the community? How will this expertise be provided (service sharing, local technical assistance programs, grants, partnering, etc.)?
  • How will community capacity impact who might be involved in the GSI design process? How will this influence the project scope and objectives?
  • Will ongoing complementary stormwater planning efforts need to be coordinated?
  • Is there regional planning and agency support where local plans align with regional priorities and recommendations?
  • Is support available from stormwater regulating agencies?
  • Are there relevant regional GSI case studies or experiences?

Resources