CNT Assists Lake Zurich in Crafting a Sustainable Water Management Strategy
The first step in implementing sustainable water management in a community is developing an integrated approach to understanding its relationship to water. To achieve a better perspective on this complex relationship and to provide a template for sustainable water management in communities throughout the region, CNT, in partnership with the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) and the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), conducted an integrated resource planning process for the Village of Lake Zurich, IL.
The project entailed providing technical assistance, helping to assess the community’s current water resource management programs, and assisting the Village in identifying more sustainable approaches to water resource management and the myriad of benefits this practice generates for a community. Our goal was to simultaneously work with Village administrators in reducing long-term costs and realizing a more sustainable approach to water management in the future while building lasting public support for these new water management decisions.
The pilot project had two main goals:
- Analyze the Village’s current water management practices and make recommendations to the Village on how to best implement a sustainable approach to managing water resources and services. The community is at a critical decision-making time when it has to a) weigh future costs and benefits of various water supply and wastewater infrastructure investment scenarios and b) explore innovative infrastructure approaches to stormwater management.
- Test potential processes for engaging the entire community in sustainable water planning. To do this, the team ran a public outreach campaign with a variety of initiatives that include a general public survey, educational bill inserts and some outreach events.
A technical recommendations report to the Village was completed in April of 2012. The recommendations report outlines the need for integrated approaches to water resource planning, highlights the Village’s current conditions, and outlines potential goals and planning objectives the community needs to define before moving forward. If implemented, the recommendations will help the Village reduce costs, protect water resources, improve land use planning and generate economic activity.
CNT is currently drafting a case study report for the project in Lake Zurich, IL. This detailed resource will available for other municipalities as they begin their own integrated water resource planning. For more information about the status of Lake Zurich’s water management decisions, click here. For more information about CNT’s integrated resource planning work, click here.
