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Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts accepts a LiveSmart BC Green Cities Award from Premier Gordon Campbell and Minister of Community Development Blair Lekstrom.
CITY OF SURREY - WINNER
Notable highlights of their nomination include:
- Natural Areas Strategic Management Plan has resulted in 60 per cent of City’s parks are in natural state. Over $2 million annual expenditures to improve biodiversity and habitat values of these forests;
- have implemented the Green City tree program which has allocated an additional $750,000/year to enhance urban forest and has contributed to the city planting approximately 5,000 street trees, 1,000 park shade trees, and 15,000 forest seedlings/year;
- recent CMHC statistics show that of 5,366 housing units currently under construction, only 974 are single family homes with the rest being high density/multi unit apartments and townhouses. This is better than ratio from two years ago which was 2:3 for single family to multi family;
- King George SkyTrain station area (within city centre plan area) has seven high rise towers under construction or in approval stage and all are close to transit, an urban park, and amenities/services;
- water metering for all industrial, commercial, and institutional connections and a voluntary metering program for residential connections which includes education and promotional activities as well. This has resulted in average consumption of metered users of 366m³ versus 790m³ for non metered (per household per year); and
- in 2003 Official Community Plan update, committed to expanded greenways. There is now 50 km of 3-4.5m-wide paved multi-purpose trails in 25 greenways, with a target of 200 km. There are also 60 km of paved paths in city parks plus 157 km of gravel paths.
City of Kelowna
Notable highlights of their nomination include:
- performed more than 80 upgrades and retrofits to city facilities to save over 4.4 million kWh/year;
- converted all traffic intersection lights to LED, installed 51 solar pedestrian signals and installing 100 solar lights in parks, paths etc. (this year, in partnership with federal government and Carmanah technologies);
- purchased two hybrids and 18 smart cars;
- scrapped 763 vehicles as part of Cash for Clunkers program (reduced 4,288 tCO2e, since 2003);
- offering a limited stop bus rapid transit line in fall 2008 from Westside to UBCO;
- use methane for micro-turbines and also flares methane as part of a landfill gas recovery program (13,350 tCO2e reduced in 2007);
- leader in urban forestry including first community in B.C. to complete Urban Forest Effects analysis (UFORE, looking at structure, function, and benefits of urban forest), 2nd community in B.C. to use the Street Tree Resource Analysis Tool for Urban Forest Managers (STRATUM) to analyze cost/benefit of street trees, 1st city in Canada to use “Rubber Sidewalks” around mature trees to not damage their roots, and 1st customer in North America to utilize “Silva Cells” to increase health of planted trees downtown;
- staff have conducted a complete inventory of all 20,000 planted street/park trees in Kelowna and have detailed makeup, condition and maintenance requirements;
- WaterSmart program led to 20 per cent reduction in water use;
- Kickstart: Be Active Stay Active program for school districts;
- involved in Kel-Vern Biosolids Composting Facility partnership with Vernon;
- installed high efficiency boilers and heat recovery system (from grey water) at Mission Aquatic Centre; and
- controlling sprawl through urban boundaries and promoting urban “centres”.
