Growing Water Smart: Integrated Resilience Planning

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Describe and define a framework for integrating water and land-use planning in communities.
• Describe the role of comprehensive plans in laying a foundation for integration of water and land planning.
• Cite best policies, practices and resources for better ensuring communities and watersheds are resilient to uncertainty, such as the forces of population growth and climate change.

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Where and how we grow matters. Land use drives water demand, yet land-use and water planning typically happens in silos; land and water planners might not even know one another. Even if they do, regional collaboration across jurisdictional boundaries is challenging, rare, and increasingly necessary for our plans to be effective. But how can we make this happen?

Sonoran Institute, and the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy share strategies and lessons learned from Growing Water Smart, their community assistance program helping scale integration of water and land-use planning in the Colorado River Basin. Officials from the city of Westminster, Colorado, will share their experience in the Growing Water Smart program, actions taken to integrate water and land-use planning and the challenges they face in transitioning from a suburban to urban community. A speaker involved in the development and implementation of California’s recent Sustainable Groundwater Management Act joins the discussion and shares the lessons being learned from this effort.
Learn about a framework for integrating water and land use planning, the role comprehensive/general plans can play, how Colorado Basin states are advancing the practice, and leave with resources and a shortlist of strategies that might work in your community.

 

Session Speakers

Andrew J. Spurgin, AICP
Speaker
City of Westminster
Westminster, CO

Jeremy Stapleton
Organizer and Speaker
Sonoran Institute
PHOENIX, AZ

Jim Holway, FAICP
Speaker
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Phoenix, AZ