This section is a paraphrased summary of the American Planning Association document, “Planners and Water”, PAS Report 588, by William Cesanek, AICP, Vicki Elmer, and Jennifer Graeff, AICP.

Introduction to the One-Water Approach

Water, a fundamental resource to support life, must be managed to equitably meet essential needs. Historically, land-use planners have not extensively engaged in water resource management, relying on water utilities and engineers. However, growing challenges like population growth, pollution, and climate change necessitate a paradigm shift toward more integrated management of water supply, wastewater, and stormwater. The American Planning Association (APA) recognizes this shift and has supported an integrated approach--what is being termed in the industry as “the One Water approach”.

One Water views all water within a watershed as interconnected, advocating an integrated approach to managing water supply, wastewater, and stormwater. This paradigm aims to replace industrial-era, siloed systems with sustainable, interconnected strategies. Benefits include improved resource sustainability, conservation of ecosystems, and flood avoidance. The APA's Policy Guide on Water supports One Water, emphasizing its foundational role in water sustainability.

Planners and water professionals collaborate to develop and implement One Water strategies. The interconnectedness of water systems is central to this approach, emphasizing integrated management to prevent problems in one domain from affecting others. Planners, and other water professionals, with their collaboration skills and regulatory understanding, play crucial roles in coordinating with water resource management stakeholders.

Various disciplines, including planners, engineers, landscape architects, scientists, legal professionals, and economists, are adopting the One Water approach. The shift requires planners to understand the basics of the water cycle and three infrastructure systems: water supply, wastewater, and stormwater:

• Water supply, drawn from surface and groundwater sources, is crucial for human use. Per capita, water use trends guide planners in creating sustainable practices to meet future demands.

• Wastewater, a byproduct of various water uses, undergoes centralized or decentralized treatment to prevent pollution. Increasingly, wastewater is viewed as a resource for recovery and reuse.

• Stormwater, precipitation runoff in urbanized areas, historically addressed by fast conveyance piping to alleviate flooding (“gray infrastructure”), is now reconsidered with green stormwater infrastructure and low-impact development designs to protect the natural environment and ecosystems.

In conclusion, the integration of water management into urban planning through the One Water approach is imperative. Planners and other water professionals must understand water basics, collaborate with water professionals, and adopt sustainable practices. This paradigm shift is crucial for addressing contemporary challenges and ensuring a resilient and interconnected approach to water resource management in urban environments.

Planning for Sustainable Water: Transforming Practices for Resilient Communities

Introduction. Planners play a pivotal role in reshaping water systems and resources to achieve sustainability and resilience goals. The need to address severe and unpredictable water management issues is driving progress at both local and broader scales. This summary explores two strategic planning frameworks, APA's "five strategic points of intervention" and the Sustaining Places initiative, to improve water planning and management.

Water and the Five Strategic Points of Intervention. Planners operate in key areas such as visioning, plan-making, standards, policies, development work, and public investments. However, recognizing strategic points of intervention is essential. While planners often lead in visioning and development work, collaboration with various water professionals is crucial for effective water management. Planners must align with hydrologists, engineers, landscape architects, scientists, economists, and legal experts to ensure sustainable water management.

Water in the Context of Sustaining Places. The Sustaining Places initiative by APA introduces a paradigm shift toward integrated sustainability. It offers six principles, two processes, and two attributes for plan-making standards, accompanied by best-practice actions. These standards help planners integrate water issues into their work, fostering more sustainable water management practices.

Recommended Practices. Innovative approaches, alliances, and interdisciplinary strategies are continuously evolving in water capital planning, operation and management. The principles of One Water management, emphasizing adaptability and collaboration, serve as a foundation for sustainable practices. Planners, collaborating with water professionals, must address water supply, wastewater, and stormwater practices.

• Water Supply Practices. Planners and water professionals contribute to water supply by coordinating with local providers to align water management plans with the government's vision. They ensure land-use plans support One Water management, protect traditional water resources, and address water supply in development proposals. Zoning and subdivision regulations play a crucial role, and planners must collect information on water resource availability for new developments.

• Wastewater Practices. Planners engage in conversations about innovative wastewater infrastructure, influencing growth patterns. They help decide where and when to expand municipal wastewater service, integrating sustainability goals into comprehensive plans. The field sees advancements in on-site and district-based nonpotable reuse, energy use in wastewater, and natural treatment systems.

• Stormwater Practices. Planners advocate policies to integrate stormwater best practices through comprehensive plans and development regulations. Emphasizing green systems over gray infrastructure, planners promote on-site capture, infiltration, and slow release of stormwater. Strategies like low-impact development and green stormwater infrastructure contribute to a more attractive and resilient urban environment.

A Vision for Coordinated Planning

Water stress is increasing in many parts of the world, including Ukraine, due to water supply shortages, population growth, water quality problems, and competing demands. As a result, more communities are looking to augment their current supplies with alternative water supplies. In these communities, most potable water comes from either fresh surface water or groundwater.

While a community’s priority should be to protect these existing supplies, there are many options for alternative supplies to support growth and more sustainable water use. Alternative water supplies, however, may be obtained from a variety of sources, including conservation, stormwater capture, water reuse or recycling, and more advanced technologies like desalination or aquifer storage and recovery.

Alternative supplies are an important piece in the One Water puzzle, which aims to manage finite water resources for long-term resilience and reliability, meeting both community and ecosystem needs.

Because alternative water supplies help to diversify a community’s water portfolio and can be a critical part of a sustainable and resilient water future, the need for collaboration extends beyond water utilities. Some alternative supplies, like rainwater capture and greywater, happen on-site and are installed and managed by owners and occupants rather than water providers.

Achieving the greatest success in developing alternative supplies as part of a community’s water supply portfolio will require collaboration between land use and community planners to become more standard practice.

Methodology for Better Collaboration

The WRF planning guide provides a pragmatic, 10-step framework for better integration through collaboration initiatives that could be undertaken by multi-disciplinary teams of water and land use planning professionals, as shown at the beginning of this page.

Conclusion

Transforming water management practices requires planners to collaborate across disciplines, embrace innovative approaches, and integrate sustainability into their work to expand the value and effectiveness of capital improvements, which can be challenging to fund.. The outlined frameworks and recommended practices empower planners to play a crucial role in building resilient communities with sustainable water systems.

According to the Water Research Foundation’s (WRF) Coordinated Planning Guide: A How-To Resource for Integrating Alternative Water Supply and Land Use Planning (2018), communities that have integrated land use planning and water planning processes report multiple benefits from the collaboration:

• Increasing water supply sustainability while lowering costs

• Resolving conflict between various land use plans, economic development plans, and regional/statewide water plans

• Managing competition for limited water supplies

• Facilitating the protection of natural resources and cultural heritage

• Improving water management plans, data development, and data sharing

• Identifying early warnings of legal and other water vulnerability risks and uncertainties

• Addressing urban flooding by integrating low-impact development design into land use planning

• Providing better information for the public

• Increasing predictability within the development process

• Securing water supplies that are drought tolerant and independent of weather (such as recycled water)

• Enabling the pursuit of additional community priorities (e.g. affordable housing or economic development) through more robust, holistic planning.