Beyond the Pipes: Planning for Sustainable Stormwater Management in the City of Toronto

Significant flooding in urban areas from strong storms and heavy rainfall has increased concerns about the ability of municipalities to manage the stormwater generated during these events and thereby protect infrastructure, properties, and public health and safety. Traditional stormwater management infrastructure has been successful in handling smaller storms but the infrastructure is aging and lacks the capacity to handle the large volumes of stormwater associated with these increasingly intense storms.

Sustainable stormwater management emphasizes natural solutions that combine function and performance with environmental, economic, and social benefits. Despite these advantages, integrating sustainable stormwater management practices into existing stormwater systems is a difficult process where the entrenched reliance on traditional solutions contributes to the multiple barriers to implementation.

The City of Toronto is a unique case study where political and fragmented administrative barriers have been addressed and a framework of policy, bylaws, and guidelines to encourage implementation of sustainable stormwater management practices has been established. Although several programs and projects have been initiated, financial, technical, and social barriers continue to slow progress in widespread implementation. The general lack of knowledge and understanding of stormwater as well as negative perceptions of stormwater must be overcome to encourage facilitation while lack of funding and incentives, and concerns about the operation and maintenance of sustainable stormwater management practices must also be addressed. The experiences of the City of Toronto show that although it is possible to overcome institutional barriersand ingrained beliefs, they have not yet been adapted to the current state of affairs.Social, financial, and technical barriers must be dealt with for widespread implementation of sustainable stormwater management.