Executive Summary
Introduction
Methods
Findings
Recommendations
Conclusions
Introduction
New Zealand culture abides by many values including many shared by Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. One example of this is the concept that “Water sustains life,” a belief a Maori representative expressed during a Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour Whaitua1 Committee meeting in February 2016. Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour is a body of water that is greatly treasured by the citizens living and working around it, both Maori and Pakeha2 alike. However, there is a growing concern that the community value for the harbor and what it provides is not matched in the way the community manages the harbor. In a sense, the community has turned its back on the waterfront. Reflecting this are concerns about the slow rate of the adoption of new technologies and design principles that may potentially improve water quality in the harbor.
In the past twenty years, low-impact design (LID) methods for stormwater treatment have become more prevalent around the globe, with Australia readily adopting the practice for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (Sydney, 2014). LID is a concept or philosophy in addition to a new technology. LID sets the environment as a top priority, with the aim of having development be as non-intrusive to the natural landscape as possible.
This project aids the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) in analyzing the potential impediments to the adoption of low-impact designs (LID) aimed to improve water quality in Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour. We achieved our project goal by accomplishing the following objectives: (1) Gaining an on-the-ground perspective of the harbor’s pollution status and background information on prior attempts at implementing LID, (2) Examining stakeholder views on decision-making as it relates to the adoption of LID, (3) Assessing stakeholder opinions of LID, (4) Performing an analysis of possible impediments to the implementation of LID solutions, and (5) Providing recommendations on how to best overcome these impediments.
Our team accomplished these steps to answer the single overarching question that encompasses the scope of this project: “Why are low-impact designs not as prevalent in Porirua as they could be?”
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Methods
Our team conducted several weeks of background research prior to traveling to New Zealand. Our research encompassed the geography and demographics of Porirua, the city on the shores of Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour, along with information on low-impact design and policies currently in action created by various stakeholder groups.
During our time spent in Wellington, our team conducted five interviews with representatives of different stakeholder organizations. Each interviewee had a different role in water management in the Wellington region: they were policy makers, city planners, engineers, regulators and consultants. Our sponsor liaison at the GWRC specifically identified these professionals to provide the range of thought and decision-making processes among these different positions. The results and information from these interviews shaped the discussion topics in our focus group workshop the following week.
While our interviews centered on the thought and decision-making processes of individuals interviewed, the focus group discussions addressed the specifics of the impediments to low-impact design in the Wellington region. In setting up the focus group we sent out email invitations to 18 professionals working for each of the stakeholder groups and included an open invitation to other professionals who might have interest in attending. A total of 11 guests attended the workshop and represented a cross section of the professionals involved in shaping decision-making around LID. After a brief introduction, we organized the attendees into two groups with two project team members facilitating each. We divided the focus group schedule into three segments: the first was a discussion of general perceptions of LID, the second focused more on the impediments to LID specific to Porirua, and the last segment brought both groups together for an overview of key points discussed and a brief look at potential solutions for Porirua.
Following the conclusion of our interviews and focus group, we were able to investigate our findings. We coded statements from our interview transcripts into common themes based on different aspects of the individuals’ decision-making processes and analyzed the notes from our focus group to identify common themes such as communication, cost, planning, community, and regulations.
The methods used have a number of limitations which the team needed to consider when interpreting the results. These limitations included a small sample size without the participation of land developers or major land owners. While these limitations are significant, the breadth of responses around LID decision-making offers a very useful insight into a number of factors influencing the rate of adoption of LID in the greater Wellington region. Based upon the analysis of our data, we made recommendations to our sponsor organization, the Greater Wellington Regional Council.
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Findings
After completing our first three project objectives, we discovered many trends that help to explain why low-impact design (LID) has yet to expand in the greater Wellington
region. Most of these trends relate to the process an idea goes through before becoming a policy or a normal way of operating. The first project objective of on-site observation was satisfied by travelling to Te Awarua-o-Porirua Harbour, where we observed that its natural features make it susceptible to pollution from surrounding land development. These natural features include shallow waters and a narrow connection to the sea, preventing flushing of materials and contaminants through the harbor. This gave us an initial understanding of how LID could be useful in the area.
A second on-site visit to the city of Porirua and the harbor’s catchment area, or whaitua, introduced us to prior unsuccessful attempts at installing LID. One existing design was a grass swale built out of a roadside ditch intended to filter out unwanted pollutants in stormwater runoff over a length of grassy slope before the water reached a regular storm drain. The device was not constructed as designed and did not function as well as the city planners intended, leaving the pre-existing ditch with little improvement. An additional LID method we observed in Porirua was the use of EnviroPods® in the suburban storm drains. EnviroPods® are textile sacks used to filter out harmful chemicals from stormwater. The maintenance requirement was higher than the Porirua City Council anticipated and the heavy amount of debris trapped in the devices caused the pods to rip upon attempt to clean them annually. The project team learned that although the effort was well-intentioned, a lack of communication during development and consideration for maintenance resulted in the devices being more of a hassle than the intended low-cost benefit for the city.
Through our interview process, we observed that all of the different stakeholders involved have very different roles in moving a project forward. Each step of a project requires consistent communication with all members in order to solve conflicts that develop along the way. We learned that miscommunication between parties, and at times competing goals, can have an impact on the application of LID. Specifically, for environmental technologies, we found that miscommunications between consultant engineers and regulators often result in a lack of information about the proposal. This miscommunication sometimes occurs late in the approval processes creating large development setbacks. Other interviewees expressed how the responsibility for projects within city boundaries are often contested, which greatly extends a project’s duration and complexity.
Our focus group discussed topics aimed to help us better understand the decision-making processes that might apply to the implementation of LID. We provided “table topics” regarding the impediments to LID adoption and had the participants link these thoughts to Te Awarua-o- Porirua Harbour and its catchment area. We observed that there are many issues to consider when trying to implement a new design or technology for environmental protection and sustainability. The focus group identified many obstacles, but there was also a problem disclosed in the interview process that the workshop surprisingly resolved: focus group members were discussing some issues and resolving them through the communication structure provided by this event.
Recommendations
The Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) was already brainstorming strategies to hasten the development of low-impact design (LID) in Porirua prior to our team’s
arrival. However, with the council’s guidance, it was our task to provide research and recommendations that they could use to improve their process. After several weeks of research, interviews, and discussion, the team compiled a list of recommendations that the GWRC can use to expedite the task of implementing LID in Porirua. We used the various impediments such as cost and communication that we found in our data analysis to justify why each recommendation is useful.
The most common theme that stood out throughout our data collection phase was communication and management. There were many complications due to miscommunication or a complete lack of communication between the various stakeholder groups. As such, we recommend that the GWRC host regular meetings during projects that may benefit from LID. Participants in these meetings would include the involved city councils, Wellington Water, Ltd., specific whaitua committees or an equivalent community group, and representatives from the contributing engineering firms and land developing companies. Holding these meetings can keep everyone on the same page and reduce trouble with communication, as well as create an environment to solve issues with experts in every area of LID implementation.
Along with developers joining the loop of communication, another recommendation the team provides is to use new tactics of persuasion that will make developers want to implement LID, rather than force them to through new regulations that are likely to alienate essential conversation partners to solving Porirua’s problems. Providing incentives such as rate reductions or rewarding land for each project utilizing LID would be the beginning of a movement to make LID commonplace for developers. Currently, the normal standards that developers use for building work well, but are not friendly to retrofitting LID in existing infrastructure. Incentives to use LID will allow developers to keep a profit-driven motivation, but also encourage them to begin utilizing techniques that benefit the environment, creating a new work standard.
Creating a new normal standard would not be a quick task, which connects to our third recommendation: changing the mindset of the community. Most crucial in this regard is to keep actively engaging the community about the values their harbor holds. Encouraging civic activities around the harbor and creating new industries to promote recreation and consumerism at the waterfront will help to accomplish this goal. A positive effort to increase activities in the harbor will make residents and tourists want to keep the harbor clean, healthy and visually attractive. This atmosphere may be difficult to create in the current generation, but building awareness and emphasizing the importance of a healthy harbor through the education system will help create a better future for new generations. Future generations are the future of the harbor, so having them realize that the harbor is an integral part of the city they live in may lead them to consider implementing low-impact design mechanisms to protect the health of Te-Awarua-o- Porirua Harbour and guarantee its protection in the future.
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Conclusions
Our team has made these recommendations with the community of Porirua in mind. Our goal is to spread awareness of low-impact design (LID) and make it more prevalent in the Wellington region. With these recommendations, our project team is confident that the Greater Wellington Regional Council can collaborate with all of the other stakeholders and formulate a successful plan to standardize LID implementation through cooperative efforts and begin to install LID techniques in the Porirua Harbour catchment area.