Keddie hopes to see a pilot project that considers the full range of benefits of green
infrastructure to complement the pipe-oriented www.victoria.ca/common/pdfs/sewer_jamesbay.pdf for details). She’d also love to see a consistent, comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions like those on Seattle’s municipal website, explaining what’s possible on your particular patch of paradise. “You need to have parameters and you need to understand what you are doing and how to do it right,” she explains.

“It’s not rocket science and it needn’t be expensive,” she promises. “A multilayered approach—more trees, thick dressings of leaf mulch, a few rain barrels and a rain garden—all help to reduce the volume and peak flows of storm water entering the system,” says Keddie, who installed a cistern, rain barrels and a French drain (rock-lined pit) in her yard, quietly becoming part of the solution.

Happily, these methods are being built into the mandates of city engineers Keddie knows, like Steve Fifield, Victoria’s Manager of Water and Environment, and one rain garden pilot is underway on Trent Street. Its success could cause the ripple effect she yearns for. Most important, though, is bringing this commonsense approach to the sewage treatment discussion before it’s too late. She has heard enough positive susurration from the CRD to keep her hopeful, but definite plans have yet to be confirmed.

As I write, what Emily Carr called the “summer parch” has set in with a vengeance. Record temperatures and forest fires rage across the province. As you read, the winter rains will be that much closer, and Freya Keddie dreams of “a city that welcomes the rain, full of kinetic sculptures that come alive in a downpour. I dream that we’ll follow the examples of other cities that have engaged citizens in helping to create resilience in the face of heavy rains and climate change.” Maybe this summer’s scorch will underscore Keddie’s efforts and elicit a few epiphanies so that this precious and free resource, so plentiful at times in Victoria, is not squandered.

Victoria writer Aaren Madden has a background in art and architectural history. She writes a regular column for FOCUS Magazine called “What’s your Dream City?”