Sidebars and Roundtables – Where Will You Be?
Cincinnati is the place to be October 15-17 for the 3rd annual Urban Water Sustainability Leadership Conference. The meeting has become the focal point for urban leaders to drive the paradigm shift from gray to green and take the waste out of wastewater with resource recovery. Different from other more technical workshops on the topic, the Leadership Conference examines the equation for success that includes sociology, governance, partnership, funding, regulation, and most of all leadership. Unique to the Leadership Conference are Strategic Sidebar conversations and Round Table Discussions that allow leaders to put heads together to overcome the obstacles or share a vision for what’s ahead.
Sidebar Discussions
A popular feature of the Leadership Conference, Sidebar Discussions are group strategic planning sessions exploring some of today’s most urgent urban water topics. Conference attendees will have the option to attend the general program and/or participate in these hour-long sidebar conversations. Check out the list of topics below (see the agenda for full descriptions). Which with you attend?
- How can a green job strategy help broaden support and funding?
- Jeremy Hays, Green for All
- How can we drive collaboration between the urban forestry and water sectors?
- Jennifer Judd Hinrichs, Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition
- How do we Build Public Support for Water Rate Increases (and the true cost of providing water services)?
- Bill Holman, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University
- How do decentralized, on-site systems, fit into urban water sustainability?
- Dr. Robert Rubin, Emeritus Professor NCSU & National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association
- How do you integrate green and complete streets to achieve transportation and environmental goals?
- Neil Weinstein, Low Impact Development Center
Round Table Discussions
This year’s Leadership Conference will feature for the first time face-to-face group discussions with an expert on some of the most interesting and fast-moving topics of the day in a new and popular format: round-table discussion. Designed to put participants face-to-face, on a level playing field where all participants are expected to contribute to the discussion. The small number of participants and the layout of the roundtables encourage interactivity and problem-solving. Each roundtable discussion will be led by an expert and run for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, conference participates can choose to rotate to another table with a different topic for the next 30 minute discussion. Below are the topics of the roundtable being featured at this year’s Leadership Conference (see the agenda for full descriptions).
- Water Blues ~ Green Solutions (Documentary outreach plan)
- Cynthia Berger, Penn State Public Broadcasting
- Hydraulic Fracturing – Important Measures for Protecting Water Quality
- Jeffrey Davis, Cardno ENTRIX
- What needs to happen nationally to better integrate water efficiency into other programs?
- Mary Ann Dickinson, Alliance for Water Efficiency
- U.S. EPA designation as Water Technology & Innovation Cluster
- Sally Gutierrez and Alan Vicory, CONFLUENCE
- How do we measure the benefits of green infrastructure?
- Adel Hagekhalil, City of Los Angeles – Bureau of Sanitation
- Green Infrastructure Peer Exchange Program – An Opportunity to Learn from your Peers on the Most Pressing Implementation Issues!
- Kris Hoellen, The Conservation Fund
- Green Infrastructure and Parks: Strategic Investments and Shared Agendas for Greater Community Benefit
- Chris Manning, Gary Wolnitzek, Human Nature, Inc., & John Lyons, Strand Associates
- Leveraging your Capital Improvement Dollars: Meeting Wet Weather Management Goals through a Complete Street Reconstruction
- Neil Meyers, Williams Creek Consulting
- GEMI Local Water Tool™
- Steve Shedroff, P&G, Bill Lechner, Scotts Miracle-Gro
- Banking on Green: How Green Infrastructure Saves Municipalities Money and Provides Economic Benefits Community-wide
- Nancy Somerville, American Society of Landscape Architects
- Can the credit program model for retrofits in Philadelphia be applied to other cities? Does it make economic sense?
- Shandor Szalay, AKRF
- Integrating Green Infrastructure Projects into your CIP
- Tina Wolff and Aaron Hutton, ARCADIS
The Leadership Conference is organized annually by the U.S. Water Alliance’s Urban Water Sustainability Council. It is being co-hosted in 2012 by CONFLUENCE Water and Technology Cluster of Greater Cincinnati. Through the Leadership Conference, the UWS Council and CONFLUENCE seek to connect the dots among water, land use, parks, forests, transportation, energy, agriculture, and other sectors around a goal of revitalizing cities with multi-benefit projects that produce triple bottom-line results.
This educational event is being supported by a grant from the United Water Foundation with additional support from CH2M Hill, CDM Smith, Brown and Caldwell, Hatch Mott MacDonald, ARCADIS, AECOM, and Black & Veatch. Supporting partner organizations include the Alliance for Water Efficiency, American Public Works Association, American Rivers, Arbor Day Foundation, Association of Clean Water Administrators, Denver Botanic Gardens, Green for All, National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Low Impact Development Center, Inc., Sustainable Urban Forest Coalition, The Conservation Fund, WateReuse Research Foundation, and WateReuse Association. Pennwell Publishing is the media partner.
For a detailed agenda and registration information visit http://conta.cc/uwslc2012 or contact Lorraine L. Koss at 202.533.1819 or email lloken@cwaa.us.
