Afternoon Breakout Sessions | Day One: Monday, July 19

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1:30 PM - 2:45 PM ET | Sessions 1, 2, & 3

Session 1: Nationwide Land Use and Water Planning: Policy and Practice

The purpose of this session is to share recent research into the state-level laws about integrated land use and water management planning. This session will describe the connection points between land use and water management, the range of legal contexts nationwide, how law impacts local action and implementation within select case study states, and describe how stand-out communities are integrating land and water management, either according to their state’s standards or in spite of them. There has been noted interest in recent years from several states that are interested in formalizing a connection between land use and water planning. This session will provide examples of integrated planning from the local level to states that already mandate such a connection.

Moderator: 
Erin Rugland, Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy

Presenters:

1. Erin Rugland, Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, "Tools for Connecting Land Use and Water"
2. Sagar Shah, American Planning Association, "Water Elements in Comprehensive Land Use Planning"
3. Mary Ann Dickinson, Alliance for Water Efficiency, "Water Utility Planning: Opportunities for Land Use Integration"
4. Courtney Black, Intera, "Water Efficiency Plans and Land Use Planning"

Session 2: Understanding Outdoor Water Use for Growing Western Communities

This session focuses on the role of outdoor irrigation as a critical consumptive use of dwindling water resources in urban residential areas and open spaces of cities in the American West. While there are many benefits to irrigated urban vegetation and landscapes, the design of those areas needs to account for water adequacy, particularly in the face of population growth and climate change. While population growth increases the demand for scarce irrigation water, warming temperatures exacerbate the urban heat island effect and rates of evapotranspiration. Developing better understanding and practices for landscape irrigation in Western cities is critical to meeting water adequacy challenges, especially for residential outdoor irrigation. This session will include presentations on numerous aspects of urban outdoor water use for Western cities experiencing population growth and climate change, including: determinants of outdoor irrigation demand; methods of forecasting scenario testing; offsite impacts and benefits of irrigation; and best practices in irrigation and landscape management.

Moderator: 
Austin Troy, University of Colorado Denver, Department of Urban and Regional Planning

Presenters:

1. Gretel Follingstad and Austin Troy, University of Colorado Denver, "Scenario planning for future outdoor water use: Development of 50 future scenarios for projected growth, climate change and yard management in Aurora, CO"
2. David Sampson and Ray Quay, Arizona State University, "Product type and density influence residential water use: Denver Water data and agent-based simulations"
3. Aditi Bhaskar, Colorado State University, "Lawn irrigation contributions to urban baseflow in the Denver, Colorado region"
4. Philip Stoker, University of Arizona, "Urban design and water consumption in the Phoenix"

Session 3: Chasing Unicorns: A New Model for Urban Stream Management

The Mile High Flood District (MHFD) is working with a group of experts to cultivate a new urban stream management approach aimed at identifying context-sensitive solutions that provide the highest conveyance functions and the lowest maintenance needs- solutions as hard to find as unicorns! For decades, the basis for managing urban streams has been centered on the fundamental building blocks of hydrology and hydraulics – often resulting in expensive-to-build (and maintain) ‘hard-armor’ solutions. Our approach is expanding to include other fundamental building-blocks, like geomorphology and vegetation, that help redefine metrics for ‘high-functionality’. This approach is based on the important realization that urbanization is an entirely human condition that has altered every aspect of stream systems to accommodate human populations. This critical interrelation of human habitat and urban waterways strongly suggests that place-making characteristics that accommodate societal context, scale, and program are as essential to any high-functioning stream as hydrology and hydraulics.

Moderator:
Laura Kroeger, Mile High Flood District

Presenters:

1. Jesse Clark, Stream Landscape Architecture and Planning
2. Laura Kroeger, Mile High Flood District, "Chasing Unicorns: A New Model for Urban Stream Management"
3. Mary Powell, Mile High Flood District, "Vegetarian and Ecosystem Enhancement in Drainage Infrastructure"
4. Brian Murphy, Otak, "Integrating H & H and Geomorphology into A New Model for Urban Stream Management"