Sustainable Municipal Water Management

What is Sustainable Municipal Water Management?

Cities are increasingly embracing an integrated approach to water management that captures the full spectrum of a community’s impact on water, particularly in the face of the cumulative impacts associated with urbanization, intensive agricultural activity, and climate change. This approach cuts across traditional municipal delivery areas to include infrastructure design and operations, land use planning and approvals, public education and participation, emergency planning and response, pollution prevention, and habitat and shoreline restoration.

The declaration adopted by the Cities Initiative membership reflects this broader responsibility for protecting our water resources. The Sustainable Municipal Water Management Framework consists of six principles and twenty-five milestones to work towards. Indicators to measure progress have also been developed. A detailed description of these principles, milestones and indicators can be found in the above report,  “Sustainable Municipal Water Management: Measuring Progress and Reporting Publicly [pdf]“.

The following municipal reports and best practices were created or supplied to the Cities Initiative through the Sustainable Municipal Water Management Program – they can also be found in our Best Practices Library by clicking the tag “Program: Sustainable Municipal Water Management.”

• Montréal, QC: Toward Sustainable Municipal Water Management, October, 2013
• Durham Region, ON
  • Our Water is Worth It !
  • Progress Chart
  • Summary of the Report
• Milwaukee, WI: 2014 Sustainable Municipal Water Management Public Evaluation Report
• St. Catharines, ON: City of St. Catharines Sustainable Municipal Water Management Program
• Evanston, IL: 2014 Sustainable Municipal Water Management Public Evaluation Report