Resilient Design and Urban Planning with Lisa Lattu

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Constructive voices, the podcast for the construction people, with news, views and expert interviews. [00:00:10] Speaker B: So here I am again, Jackie De Burca in sunny Spain. And today I have what I believe will be a very interesting and insightful and a conversation packed full of very important information around resilient design and urban planning and many other topics. I am here with Lisa Lattu, who's working with Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc. Lisa, it's brilliant to have you here today. Would you like to give us a little introduction, please? [00:00:38] Speaker A: Certainly. Thank you very much. As you said, my name is Lisa Lattu, and I call myself a plan geneer, which is a growing group of people who are navigating between different professional silos and expertises to bring better projects and more resilient design for communities. For me, plan geneering is one part civil engineering and one part urban planning. So I have a civil engineering degree, which I undertook thinking that engineers were problem solvers. And when I started working, I did engineering support for planning projects. And I became very excited. I didn't know that there was something like planning out there looking at that bigger scale. And I want to give a little tiny shout out to my mentor, Sarah Jane McLennan. She told me that the best thing to do would be to get a planning certification. So here in the US, that's an AICP, the American Institute of Certified Planners. She thought that would marry up great with my engineering license, and she told me to go to the Harvard graduate School of Design, and I did, and that's another story. But that was fun. And that's when I sort of became a plan geneer doing planning and engineering and even some operations for water and wastewater. [00:02:05] Speaker B: Fantastic. That's a really interesting background so far, Lisa, and we're very much into and supportive of mentees and mentors here at constructive voices. So lovely to hear that story. Now, let's jump into some of the subjects that you're going to educate our audience on. Lisa, can you explain why resilient infrastructure is particularly critical for cities prone to natural disasters, such as hurricanes? [00:02:33] Speaker A: Certainly. And before I do that, I want to add on that it's not just the sort of natural disaster that you're expecting. I think that most cities can be prone to one kind of disaster or another. I have got, you know, 15 years on the US Gulf coast where hurricanes are considerable. But I think what we see more and more is the way the interconnectedness of things that, you know, an it outage or a power outage, a lot of different things can affect communities ability to provide the things that it wants to provide. So certainly I'm focused on water and wastewater. Power comes into it and mobility. And one of the things for infrastructure, particularly if it's buried infrastructure, it's sort of unseen. So I think there are a lot of examples of major water line breaks putting communities out of water who may not be prepared for it because it's not something that you think about. It's not something that you walk past and you see. So for me, some of that resilience is really important, not just where you might expect it or see these really devastating natural disasters, but also things that are sort of brewing or can happen that you hadn't planned for. So that's why for lan, we made a special definition. Again, words are important. So sustainability and resilience, a lot of those things go hand in hand or mean different things to different people. So what we try to focus on is the ability of infrastructure to withstand a short term emergency and adapt to evolving conditions for the long term. So that's a very long answer. But looking at a city who knows that a big disaster or hurricane might be coming, that lets you think about what can you do to sort of ride out the storm, whether that's to close everything down, right, so that you can have your people and your equipment to safety and then come back on when it's safe or if it's something really life giving that you need to do your best to provide as much as possible throughout the event and either for the entire community or for critical points. So, again, a very long answer, because resilience is very exciting, and it depends on how you're looking at it, how you want to define it, what it means for your community or your project. [00:05:21] Speaker B: You're right, Lisa. There are so many faces to it, and I know we're across the water from each other, let's just say across the pond. But as we're mentioning water, obviously, like in, in England, there's been a lot of issues with the water systems there. So some of our audience would be based there, and they'll be very familiar when you're, you know, when you're referencing water, they'll be very familiar with how awful that is for their, you know, resilient infrastructure. What do you find, though, Lisa, are some of the most significant challenges that cities face when they're lacking that infrastructure? [00:05:56] Speaker A: I think a lot of it really is that maybe sort of timeframe, right? Because you, when you build a waterline, for instance, it's not the kind of thing that you plan to update every five or ten years. So it's on sort of a different scale from a lot of our thinking, whether that's political terms or even human nature there, you know, water lines that have been in service for hundreds of years, and then there's water lines that, for one reason or another, don't make it, you know, through a single year once they're installed. So I think that one of the, we talk a lot in the US about aging infrastructure. I'm pretty sure that's a universal topic. At one point, you could sort of lay some basic tunnels or lines, and they provided for your city forever. Some of that has to do with the cost of maintaining it. Right. Everyone tries to be lean. You sometimes can cut your staff or your budgets to do maintenance, but a lot of it really is just the age. If something has lasted five or ten or 20 years, you kind of quit thinking about it. I think about it like a roof or certainly an air conditioner, which we certainly love in Texas to try to help us be comfortable. And some of those things you just don't think about every day. So it can be an investment issue where you put in a lot of money to install it originally, and you really have to dedicate those funds because it doesn't last forever. It does require constant maintenance, and it's hard to maintain things that are under the ground. So all of that to say that it is something that's huge, and I think about like a battleship raid, where you start painting, painting and scraping on one end, and by the time you get to the other end, it's time to begin again. So definitely, infrastructure needs a lot of care, and the older it gets, the more care that it needs. [00:08:08] Speaker B: Certainly. Yeah, that's obviously the case. And that's, you know, very much linked to the story I told you beforehand, Lisa, about what's happening in England. Obviously. Now, what about resilient design practices? Obviously, they can save lives during natural disasters, which, as you say, quite correctly, is only one aspect of, you know, resilience. But, like, how can they do this? Do you have some case studies that you've worked on that you could talk to us about? [00:08:39] Speaker A: Well, some of the things, one part of it, this is where really, I pull more to the planning side. A lot of that is planning is about those connections, about looking at issues or projects from different lenses, whether it's a civil or government lens or a community lens or mobility lens, or even just how it ties in with nature, different things like that. So that's one part of planning, and the other part of planning is always looking at possible futures and plausible futures, right? Looking at how different spaces can be used and trying to think about using them differently, or, you know, if this is what we have in front of us, but the community really wants that instead, or community tastes have changed over time or needs change over time, is looking at how can we sort of the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle, is there a way to turn that into something different? Always think of a story about when a lot of refrigeration was immediately needed in a very small community and they were able to use their ice rink as sort of a walk in refrigerator to refrigerate perishables in an emergency. So that taking that planning mindset into a civil engineering practice is what leads me to think about, well, if this is the water line that we're building today, you know, and it's delivering water from air to be. But now things have changed, and whether the source is different or the community has grown in a different way, either needs more water or less water or just water moving in a different direction, it's that idea of looking at either what we already have and how can it be reused, or how can we build something that might be flexible, that might be able to be used differently. I think another thing I wanted to say about that is the idea of looking at natural occurrences, whether they be weather or whether they be other disastrous events, is can you really design something that will withstand every single storm or every single earthquake? There's a lot of best practices that you do to sort of handle the everyday. And then beyond that, maybe you think about instead of an ever higher flood wall that might fail spectacularly or not quite be high enough for the next flood that you didn't predict is a way to live with that flooding. Right. To understand that sort of cycle of water that comes and goes and some interesting things that have been done in the Galveston area for UTMB is to allow those first floors to be flooded, to have flooring that can easily be mopped out and hosed down, and to make sure that electric and critical components are not on the subterranean or floor level, but are up higher on the walls or even on the second floor. So things like that, I think are really interesting as well. As I come back to that, the water wastewater plant idea, even some of your electric facilities, if these are things that you need to have operating and you need to have operators there. So I think if you take care of the people who are taking care of you, that goes a long way. So whether that's allowing staging to happen remotely or where people live, or whether that's making sure that you include a facility on a critical site that is a sort of bunker, weatherproofed emergency housing so that people can have a place to ride out the storm and then not be too far away from the facility when it's time to check on something or to get it rolling again. Those are things that I've seen that I think are exciting. [00:13:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it is really exciting, Lisa. Obviously, challenging times bring exciting solutions, and that's really where we're all at at the moment, aren't we? Can you provide examples of some of the cutting edge, resilient design strategies and technologies that your company is employing? [00:13:23] Speaker A: Sure. I think, and this is probably depending on your perspective, but I think one of the perhaps most cutting edge is that idea that what is old is new again. Right. Is that idea to look at things and to embrace and prepare rather than to try to force or hold back. I think that's something that we certainly see with first peoples and with communities that have hundreds and thousands of years of experience living in their environment. Another thing is, of course, looking at the data, right? There's so much data now and the ability to model that data and to have computers run, you know, hundreds and thousands of simulations against the criteria that you set up to help you track the different variables in combination. Like, well, what if we did this and this, or substitute that? And being able to show that and communicate that data is really important. Different dashboards or simple graphs to show, you know, here's the wide range of possibilities. You know, you love those sort of Pareto curves, and they show you that this is where you're ticking off the most of your boxes, you know, for the least amount of money or whatever money you have budgeted for this kind of thing. So that's certainly something that we're doing, trying to use those tools in the background and then to communicate them both with technical advisors as well as decision makers and the public, getting them on board with the direction and the decisions pathways that lead to solutions. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Excellent. Now, you've been involved in this for significant amount of years, Lisa. How have these strategies evolved over those years? [00:15:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And so, again, I might have said it before, but I think planning is really looking at that long scale and looking at things in five and ten and sometimes 20 or 30 years by the time all of those components can be built and put together. So I was thinking a lot about, again, sort of in the Texas Gulf Coast, Hurricanes Ike 2008, Hurricane Harvey in 2017. And there's a project that I might get a chance to talk more about later that the Harris county flood control district is working on. And Elian is part of that is Hall's bayou, which is, I still struggle with what a bayou is. I think it can be a creek, I think it can be a river. And maybe it depends on where you grew up or how much water is in it, but it's a very long watercourse that's moving from the uplands towards the sea. And when those fill, obviously they can flood. So there's a great project that's going on now in this halls Bayou area of Harris county, which is near Houston, Texas. And I was, I couldn't believe when I looked up what, what generated some of these ideas. And it was a hurricane Allison, which is in, was in 2001. So this was a lot of flooding. And some of it is, you sort of work your way. These bayous tend to run kind of east west across the city of Houston as it slopes south to the sea. So as you sort of handle different bayous across the center of the city and some of the suburbs of the city, this is one that sort of runs through the middle. So cleaning up that middle, understanding what flood controls can be made in that area, is affecting, obviously, so many people who've had, you know, tens of thousands of homes flooded in both Allison and Harvey, which were two significant flooding events. So some of that is to take the data from past disasters and to analyze where the water wants to go, where the water typically goes, and look at which ways can we prepare for that flood, expect that flood, you know, remove things that are going to be flooded to save that expense? And in which ways can we harden the infrastructure or redirect that water to spare neighborhoods and to keep, keep the community surviving through an event. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Okay. And you've mentioned, obviously, a couple of the hurricanes, you know, but are there projects around those or linked to those that demonstrate success at the moment, do you think? [00:18:15] Speaker A: Well, I, I think that's what I was trying to say for Halls Bayou. I think that that is success. And some of the success is that it took really years of study, right? So years of sort of aftermath, right. Repairs, documentation forms to be filled out, gathering the data, reviewing the data, and building a big program, I guess. So more than a single fix right at one end of the watercourse or another. It's a cumulative or program that's built with lots of little projects across the way. So I think that, and that is a success that's certainly. It's a larger scale. It's probably hard to imagine just with words, but it is across we, of course, english units, but 660 odd square miles, at least 30 miles across. It's a large. It can feel slow moving, but it is a substantial project. Some smaller ones could be as simple as detention basins near communities, especially if you are going to turn a golf course or something that really has fallen out of use and is taking up a lot of the land area, that sort of conversion of that into park space and into dedicated flood storage. So there was one of those being built for the Clear Lake City Water Authority, and it was already in construction when one of those hurricanes came along. So even unfinished, it was able to store a substantial amount of water and preserve that community, and not merely redirect it into another community, but hold that water so that it could be dissipated over time back into a natural channel. So that was one where, you know, the simple idea of having a place for that water to go until the watercourses had dropped down to where it could move was a fix. And I think especially for community to be able to see that. And so I think they were excited about the project already, and then to watch it happening and saving their homes, then they certainly had a lot of respect and ownership and excitement for that project and ability to come and work on the site and learn more about it and have it be part of their community rather than, you know, infrastructure plopped on them from above. Sometimes we know what these things do, a lot of times we don't. I think a lot of that resilience goes back to, do you really understand where your water comes from or where your sewer goes or how the power is connected to you. So being able to see that and be a part of that at the community level is great for education and is great for ownership and respect and being a part of the solutions, certainly. [00:21:32] Speaker B: It really is. It's so important, particularly these days, Lisa. And not only is it connecting the community and making them feel part of the solution, but it's also very important to promote sustainability, isn't it? [00:21:46] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Sustainability and funding. Unfortunately or fortunately, you know, these great ideas sometimes take money, sometimes take a lot of money, and that is a commitment from political leaders, from private developers who are a part of this. And I think as we all sit and bemoan our fate when it's time to pay the piper, to pay the taxes, it's important to have that connection and feel like your money is going to a project or an organization where you think that they're really doing good things and you see those effects, it doesn't, doesn't take less out of your wallet, but I think maybe it makes it a little bit easier to contribute and to be a part of. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Certainly. I think. I think that's a very realistic and a human answer. Obviously, it's going to something good, isn't it? You have to pay those taxes anyhow, right? [00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot of times they go to good things, but it is nice to feel to see it in action. Right. A lot of times the money goes so far away, I think it's hard to remember that. [00:22:58] Speaker B: Sure. Now, Lisa, what are the key elements of strategic and long range infrastructure planning that help build disaster resistant communities? [00:23:08] Speaker A: I think some of the key elements, I think, are really to make those connections. Right. To not look at it through just one lens, to not look at just the mobility lens, or to not look at just the power lens. It's sort of a blend of experiences, but it's looking at, say you have the best water plant ever designed. Right. It's great, it's efficient, it's guaranteed to produce superior, excellent water. But then there's a power failure. Right. So how much water can you produce when there's no power? So I know there was one plant in particular I was thinking of, where they had connection to two different substations, right. To help ensure that if one should fail, the other one would also be there. And it was always very stable and reliable. And then a third component, backup diesel generators, was added. And again, that's really great. I think it's just you, again, have to think about, well, how long does that diesel last? Right. So say it's a very devastating event. All of the normal power is knocked out, and you're on that emergency power and say that you have enough diesel to last a week, is a week going to be enough time to be able to get a tanker in to resupply that? So understanding those different connections, not only within that unit, but with your surrounding communities. Right. There's almost rarely a single isolated type of water or wastewater infrastructure. You almost always have neighbors or regional partners. And I think some of that is natural to work together, to get on the phone and say, hey, we can't find any chlorine. Do you have somebody that's selling to you? Or do you have someone who has a tank or truck company that has a dispatch that is able to find the routes to bring it in from where it's needed? And those are sort of the ideas of having the plant be resilient, having the power be resilient, understanding the chemicals and the trucking that comes into it. And again, I come back to the people. Right. Because at some point, you need to have personnel on site. So do you have a place safe for them to shelter? Are you going to be able to give them time off in advance of something that you can see coming like a hurricane, to make sure that their homes and families are safe and that they're able to come and ride out this disaster? Those types of things? And I might have wandered away from your question. [00:26:13] Speaker B: That's okay. No, because, but as you said, you know, as you said before, it's all interlinked back into the community, isn't it? And I guess that leads us on. That leads us on, Lisa, to, you know, you mentioned it in terms of taxes, we have to always think about the economics of everything, whether we like it or not. What kind of benefits do you think the residents, businesses, and the overall economy gain from this type of resilient urban design? [00:26:39] Speaker A: So a lot of that is, of course, able, you know, at that base level. Right. Being able to survive, being able to minimize your outages, your discomfort, your. Your not being in service. I think everyone prefers to have no change. So we like to be able to keep running the way that we're always running. I think you really get stuck. I think that when a disaster is severe enough or dramatic enough, it can change the mindset, and people are able to more flexibly go to that sort of priority level, you know, emergency survival, sustenance. And I think the ones that are really hard are where spotty, you know, maybe affects some areas other differently than others, or only one service is knocked out. I always think about, like, garbage strikes or when there's something wrong with the sewage. So, again, how does your sewage leave your home? It's not something that you really think about every day, but if your garbage is piling up or you can't get any sewage out of your home, your comfort and your quality of life really goes downhill fast. So understanding, again, the interconnectedness of these things, that flooding can affect your drinking water, can affect your wastewater, can affect your power and looking and working at different scales and at different levels. Right. So again, there's the level of a single unit of infrastructure and related units, tangential units, and then there's also the different scales of what can you do at your home or in your neighborhood or in your sort of sector of the city. It's really thinking ahead, you know, making plans imagining what could happen, what you can do to prepare and being part of those decisions. Right. So I think we're going to talk a little bit about stakeholders. So some of that resilience is there's so many different things that can be important and really being able to prioritize and state what is important for the community and have that community support for, for the things that you select. One of the things that I think about is for resilience. You can start anywhere. You just can't start everywhere. So it's a large process and there are, again, so many different kinds of things that could happen. And so it's really to have that community support to start in one area, to say, we really want to make sure that our vulnerable communities or our healthcare communities have what they're going to need in an x kind of event and start from there, and to look at, again, all those connections and interactions to make sure that you can get your emergency services people to a location, say, and be able to survive a certain kind of event. And I think the more that you start those little pieces, the more those sort of chain together and can build a more resilient and sustainable community. [00:30:16] Speaker B: You have experience, obviously, a federal and state disaster response and recovery. That's huge. I mean, most people, most people only read about these things in the newspaper and see it on tv and so on. So it'd be fascinating to hear you describe your role and your experiences in this area. [00:30:34] Speaker A: Sure. And I think I was thinking about that and being back in hindsight. Right. Is it fascinating? I think certainly in the US when we hear federal, we think paperwork. And that's what I, that's my main takeaway is that there is so much documentation. I think some of this comes back to communication. Right. And the just pace of different events. Right. Your local is normally your quick, you get state supplements. And I guess my experiences and responses have been at a local level. So then when disasters are large enough, right, then they're declared by the different entities in the US, the state level or the federal level. And so those things are all prescribed. Right. And so there's certain triggers and things are clicked on or clicked off. And mostly they feel, at least to me, as though there's sort of support and recovery kind of on the back end. So there certainly was a program that I was part of with the city of Houston after Hurricane Harvey, which was looking at the damage and looking at repair, of course, but also looking at mitigation. What can we plan to do to survive this kind of event in the future. So that part is exciting, but it's also while you're still mopping up and replacing things and trying to get back online. So it is exciting, but it's just so much communication and documentation because everyone can't come out to the site. So how can you communicate that? Through, you know, prescribed regulatory and paperwork and bureaucracy. And it takes really a lot of dedication and a team to learn how to speak those languages and to understand the way the regulations are written so that if the regulations and the forms don't always seem to sync up. Right, you know, the regulation wants to do a, B and C, but when you're looking at the form, it's talking about one, two, and three. So, fortunately, unfortunately, you know, the more you have those kinds of events, the more you learn how to work through them and have a team that really knows what they're doing. But it is really exciting to be on site and to say, boy, we already have a 15 foot wall around this door, and yet water still came in and came up over a six foot door that was surrounded by a 15 foot wall. So that's just so much water. But to be able to say, you know what? Instead of just a normal, quick exit door, which is the way it was set up, so that you could quickly exit the interior of this chemical storage to escape, you know, that maybe what we need is to have a watertight door, you know, from. From a more nautical kind of thing, to be able to hold back the pressure of this water from outside to keep it from coming in and flooding that kind of equipment. So that is interesting. Again, my perspective was to be local and to try to, again, get things up and running while beginning what feels like never ending documentation, but it sort of is what it is. Right. And to look for that funding and to really be aware of what those parameters are. You know, some things that you really need, if they're not covered by the regulations, then you really need them. But this particular program won't be able to help you. So to understand which programs are out there, which sort of improvements fit which programs, and to do all of that while you're continuing to put out safe drinking water. [00:34:53] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that is, it is a big challenge. Is that the main challenge, Lisa, that you face during these times, or are there other challenges that you haven't mentioned so far? [00:35:03] Speaker A: I think that those are the main ones. I think there was one. You know, I guess maybe the more you work, the more they blend together. That's one of the things that I was thinking about, is when you bring in your different stakeholders and whether that that's the community or whether that's the people that you're depending on to run your utilities, understanding the different roles and the different needs and really their experiences. I'm always impressed to find people who have survived, whether they're disasters or man made events or just really have insight into if there is a fire, if there is an explosion, these are the things that we need to do. In fact, I remember now that that was at some .1 of my jobs was to prepare a safety plan, right, for the facility and starting with knowing what is the closest hospital and what is the sort of closest doctor's office or urgent care. And those kind of things change over time. And sort of the more you learn, right, if you have staff that you need to get on site but the water is so high that their personal vehicles can't get in, then that helps you develop either a policy to, in advance of a storm, to let people take home equipment that rides higher above the water or something that might be a facility equipment, but would help them return to the site if needed, or to have sort of a carpool area where if you can get to this location, we can gather you up and bring you into the facility in a high water vehicle, those kinds of things. Or to understand it if there is some sort of explosion or disaster on the plant, where can we meet, you know, to count noses and see who's missing or who might need help and where can we safely shelter? A lot of your utilities and industry do this kind of thing over all the time. And that's one of the elements I think of resilience is a lot of times you're doing it already. You might think of it as just good design. You might think of it as just planning ahead. So some of it is just chaining all of those different ideas together. And really it's to constantly be looking at where you are and where you would like to be so that as each new little opportunity or project comes your way, you can help chain them together to move in that direction. Just because most of these efforts really are massive and take a lot of time and effort. [00:37:59] Speaker B: How important, Lisa? I mean, obviously you've mentioned, you know, know, the huge importance of knowing how to work with the system in terms of, like, where the money might be coming from, you know, depending on, depending on the situation and so on. But at the end of the day, one of the things that comes up as a huge question, particularly because of what you've been saying, is how important are the coordinated efforts between government levels and the private sector during these times? [00:38:30] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think a lot of times those fall again into those different levels or different lenses. I think a lot of what you might see or read about if you're a civilian or a normal resident sort of unengaged, you hear a lot about what your experience. So if you're exposed to a lot of media about what's happening politically, I sometimes think that politics is defined by that strife. Right, of who is in control or what their objectives are and trying to match up those objectives. I think that that gets a lot of press. Sometimes it's very cooperative, sometimes it's more antagonistic, and sometimes it's just at cross purposes. But then there's also that level of the people who do this. Right. So if you have a neighbor or something, someone who's working for, say, an emergency services or the hospital, and you learn the different things that they are doing, that's what you're exposed to and that's what you know. So these are sort of, sort of like a henchen where each of the fingers is its own unit, right? So maybe, maybe it's a handshake where some of the fingers are working really well. Obviously, the more everyone can work together, the better. But I think you don't need to be discouraged if it seems like you're likely only hearing part of the story. Right. There's a political story and there's a financial story, and there's an actual utility or service story, and there's an infrastructure story. Certainly what they've seen recently in Houston with this last hurricane barrel is the line work. Right. Not too much flooding, certainly some significant wind damage in some places. And yet with overhead power lines, nearly 3 million people out of power. [00:40:41] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. [00:40:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, it is, it is. And it really takes time. Right. You know, there were some storms earlier, Derecho. Right. High winds that blew down power towers, things I didn't think I would, would really see. Right. In a not tornado kind of area. So it's one thing when you can see the damage, it helps you think about what needs to be done before things can be put back in place. But if you're in an isolated neighborhood where there's not a lot of damage and you're just hot and sweaty, you just want your power back on and it's really all that you can think about. And of course, you get really excited when you see the line workers in your area, and sometimes you never see them because of the way the grids are built. So in that case, I think that there could have been different messaging. Right. To help people understand what was happening, what wasn't happening. I think if you don't have that communication, there's a rush to fill that gap with, oh, this is what I heard, you know, down the street when I was waiting for gas, and this is what I heard from my neighbor who has a cousin who works so and so. And that just really, really spreads, especially in this day and age. So some of it is to have everybody working together, and some of that really is to not overly focus on one piece or another, because there just are different moving parts in any sort of infrastructure as well as the politics and the government around it. [00:42:20] Speaker B: Definitely. Definitely. And one of the things that, you know, obviously is a special specialism of your, of yourself, Lisa, is, you know, water resource management. And during these times or just during normal life, this is, you know, top and center to, you know, to humans living, living a half decent, you know, life, isn't it? Are you able to provide an overview of regional water resources and supply negotiations and how they're actually impacting urban resilience? [00:42:51] Speaker A: Sure. Sure. I think one of the most exciting things that's happening, I'm trying to think now, if it's just in the US, I, I can't imagine. I think a lot of times, of course, we like to borrow great ideas that we find elsewhere. But in the US now, there's a US water alliance, and they are pushing something that's called one water. I say pushing, but they're promoting, they're developing programs, they're bringing people together. And again, it's sort of like resilience. Right. It sounds like, oh, we just need to be prepared. We just need to do this. We just need to think about how to survive. It feels very simple, but so for one water, it's that all waters are connected. Right? Your rain water is your drainage, is your drinking water, is your waste water. And we have a fixed amount on the planet. So whether it's in ice or in oceans or on the ground or in an underground aquarium, aquifer. So it's a, I guess I'll say both a simple and a complex idea. Right. So the, the simple part of it is right there, and the complex part of it is to allow all of these different silos that have built up around different things to think about it differently. So again, I think about that. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Right. Certainly. I saw this in the city of Houston where, when the city was founded, there was fresh water in those bayous bubbling up through springs from underground to the surface. And then as the city's thirst and need for water grew, they drilled and dug wells to again have more groundwater. And then, as on the Gulf coast, the groundwater being pumped out depleted those clay soils, and they began to compact and shrink. There was a lot of subsidence and flooding. And so this led to a program, the Harris Galveston subsidence district in the 1970s, where they began to say, we need to limit the water that we're pulling from this really large, stable, and prolific aquifer. So here you've got this fantastic water supply, but it is pretty bad for your environment if it's going to cause you to sink and to flood. So in the seventies, they began these programs and a conversion to surface water. So I think that even in the United States, there's sort of eastern water law and western water law, but the basic of it is to move away from groundwater to surface water. And as those surface water sources are located or developed, they're in certain locations. Right? So a lot of times that means moving the water around. So that's part of it is. And again, that's at a sort of slow moving scale, but really, really large projects, many of which are in motion today and will continue to be as you converted region that large from one water supply to another. But then that makes you really think when there's a drought, that's something that can affect that surface water. So understanding those different water portfolios, and that's just sort of for a single unit. But again, all the water is connected. So a lot of times, certainly in Houston, though, the bulk of the water in the Trinity river is downstream from the Dallas Fort Worth area. So again, in the 1970s, when there were efforts to clean up the wastewater effluent, it really improved the quality of water in those rivers. So as those regulations change, the sort of surface changes. But I certainly see, you know, there are turf battles between different cities and states over water supplies, and a lot of that is on the longer range, like, well, this is what I need, you know, for my community, and this is the way I interpret this law or this agreement. But I think in the short term, right when there is a drought, certainly I live in a community now where we are constructing to bring in more surface water and groundwater, which can be moved from place to place. But until the project is ready, we still need water because we've grown faster than predicted. So we're able to borrow water or credits from a groundwater from a neighboring city. So you sort of work at large scales to enhance or perfect your long term portfolio. But I think at least so far, in perhaps minor emergencies, you can borrow, you can have an emergency interconnect. A lot of cities and towns that run into each other will have valves and piping where they can connect to each other so that if there is an outage, we can share water with each other in an emergency. Right. To support life or put out fires, and then we can make up the money or the billing or the cost for that after the event. And I think similar to that idea. Like I said, if we are building a line to bring more water to the community, but we need water in the meantime and someone else has some to spare. Again, this is if it's coming from an aquifer, sometimes you have to pipe it from a to b, and sometimes you can just say, well, you're limited by on how much you can withdraw, I can withdraw more, and we'll do the paperwork to show that you are withdrawing from me. So some of that is, is maybe technical or bureaucratic or is doing the paperwork, but some of that is the ways that communities can work together. [00:49:17] Speaker B: One question that comes to mind, Lisa, while you're giving a very in depth description of how water can work between the communities and particularly the importance of that, especially during disasters of various types. What about rain harvesting? We're talking about groundwater. [00:49:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, surface water. [00:49:36] Speaker B: But there's been no mention of rain harvesting as yet. [00:49:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So, and again, I know, at least in the US, that varies from state to state. I think in Texas, we promoted really heavily. Again, that's sort of the idea of scale. Right. I guess I typically think about it. I see a lot of rain barrels. I see a lot of cistern type things, which again, is the old is new. Right. In some of the early days, you know, first peoples and native peoples would certainly collect rainwater, and now we have very newfangled ways to do it. Again, a lot of our water agencies certainly try to collect water to do their irrigation on site with rainwater. A lot of them use a reuse water. Right. Which is comes from a wastewater effluent and it's treated to where it can be safe to put on irrigation. It's a little bit, yeah, not quite drinking water standard, but it can certainly be used for irrigation. And sometimes just the more you move your irrigation off of a drinking water supply, the more you have a water supply. But you can catch rainwater at your house. House. I want to think that some places where it's really arid, I might have heard where there are actually restrictions because they need that rainwater to hit the surface and become surface water. But I think most places you can collect your own rainwater. And I've seen really fascinating things with even collecting that little bit of air conditioning distillate. Right. That evaporative runoff that comes from your air conditioner and being able to use that for irrigation. I think that those things are really exciting when they're done at your own home scale or business scale, but they can also be done at a neighborhood scale. Right. To help with neighborhood garden. They can be done in really urban areas with rooftop gardens. All of those things, that ability to both have the water that you have coming in from the system and being able to reuse it multiple times on your own site or have these outside sources from rain, all of those are what give that sort of little bit of resilience that you can control. And then as that one building or neighborhood becomes more resilient, it sort of frees up more water resources for other neighboring areas that maybe don't have the funding or maybe are behind in time to make that happen. So, yes, thank you. Rainwater is great to remember, and it's. [00:52:27] Speaker B: Great to hear your answer on that as well because, you know, regardless of who we've been talking to recently, a lot of those people, guests that we've had, Lisa, you know, one way or the other, they're involved in sustainable solutions, solutions around biodiversity and so on. So it's wonderful to hear that. And obviously, you know, your normal Joe or Jane Smith who is concerned about how the world is right now, it's delightful that they can do something on a domestic or business level or within their community. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. I think one of your other guests, Alexandra stead, a lot of great information in her publication. [00:53:07] Speaker B: She loved that you've said that, Lisa. Thank you. [00:53:09] Speaker A: Well, good. And I really loved, I think you were quoting another review, but again, that idea of from a selfie, you know, to a different viewpoint. So in my head I came up with, you know, there's this selfie view of this is how it impacts me or this is what I can do, and then turning it around to that sort of panorama. Right. Correct those next to each other and how we fit together. So I do, you're right. There are a lot of great thinkers about resilience, and they're, oh, my gosh, there are so many resources. That was one of the things that I wanted to mention as well. I know when I looked it up there's the American Society of Civil Engineers. I saw 16 different infrastructure classes. Right. That they were looking at. And you're right, there's a lot of push for resilience and sustainability. Sometimes it's hard to pin down exactly what they mean. But I think if you're interested in them at all, over here we have the ASCE, the ACEC, which is the American Council of Engineering Consultants. We have the AIA. American. Oh, I'm not that one. But it's an architecture something. Institute of Architecture. Sure. [00:54:25] Speaker B: Yeah. That's fun. [00:54:26] Speaker A: And I know just so many resources. [00:54:30] Speaker B: I think some of the bigger ones, like the AIA, for example, I'm sure lots of our listeners and our guests would be having an awareness of some, some of what we like to say over the pond, what you have over the pond there. Alexandra would be delighted. And we have a couple of more episodes with her coming up during August as well. So because we split that book to dissect it in a fair bit of detail, and then later in the year, we're going to have another wonderful guest, Nadina Holley. Oh, that's written a book called, she's Forbes top 30 under 30. And her book is called the nature of our cities, I believe is the name. And I'm reading that right now. And so we're going to be delving into that as well. So I'm sure somebody like yourself, Lisa, as you did with Alexandria, you're certainly going to probably learn a lot also from Nadina as well. So it's, I mean, it's fascinating. She's, she's a dutch born author who's actually moved with her family to Canada. So, you know, one way or the other, we're sort of going back and forth over the pond. [00:55:37] Speaker A: So one part of comprehensive planning, again, I like to say that the planners are always thinking ahead, thinking in different ways. And for resilience, certainly, it is to understand your regulations, right. And to understand whether they are a fit or a conflict. I will say we've talked a little bit about some regulatory and environmental planning and these great ideas, right. Of what you can do at your, you know, home or building or neighborhood scale. And a lot of times that is where the regulations, certainly over here can be different because you're working so hard to prevent a cross connection between a potable water supply and a waste supply. So as you try to move into a reuse of greywater black water systems, sometimes your regulations will prohibited. So being able to understand that and having the technical people be able to work with the policy people, to see where those conflicts are and tease them out can be important. Again, understanding what programs are available and what those rules are, what they will fund can help you make some of the changes that you're looking to make, as well as the organization and the bringing to light other things that can be funded or can be supported with different legislation or regulatory groups. But being able to think about what is important for your community, those roles, those needs and those experiences, and to have all of the stakeholders involved, hard sometimes to stomach something that's spooned out to you as good for you. But when you have the ability to say, you know, this is my situation and these are my needs, and to see if those are reflected and amplified or if they are sort of one off, to understand how they're going to fit together, how they're going to work together, and to really just imagine not what we need right now today, not what we need tomorrow, but to really think about the future, to think about children, grandchildren, different generations, how the climate, how the politics, how anything might change, and to not think of something as a once and for all, but for something that this is its intended purpose. But we've learned that maybe don't lock it down, right, leave it open for possibility for change. To think about reusing what you have. A lot of times I think you do this in communities that are more established. Some of the infrastructure that has been withstanding has organically changed over time. Looking at core community needs and being able to communicate those, being able to say, this is what we need for our community and this is where we are. Right. Maybe it's really important to bury your power lines if you can. Maybe it's really important to have alternate places to disperse water, right? Like maybe we really need to make sure that the hospital has water. So we're going to have, you know, a rain supply there, we might have an emergency, well, there we might have a connection to surface water there. I think a lot of it is to think through those possibilities and to have some sort of guiding principles and to be able to share those. A lot of times for engineering, you hear about the health and safety and the welfare of the public. So that's certainly there. Public trust, public integrity, these are some of the things that come over from the planning side. Looking at honestly, economic, racial and social equity, it's easy sometimes to feed the communities that have power and have finance, right? A lot of times they can afford to do more on their own and they're able to direct more resources to themselves. But looking really at the community as a whole to make sure that the people who are valued in that community and the people who are vulnerable also have access or are benefited from different projects that are underway. [01:00:33] Speaker B: I think that obviously the people in the place are so interconnected. So there's so much wisdom in what you're saying. Saying, Lisa, are there any examples that actually spring to mind where this type of planning has improved, you know, disaster resilience? [01:00:51] Speaker A: Again, I think I've been doing this for almost 30 years, and some of these projects take that long. I'm going to come back to that hall's Bayou project in Harris County, Texas. Again. It began after Hurricane Allison, when tens of thousands of homes were flooded. It developed into, you know, again, the survival and the recovery, and then the documentation. And ten years on, they were thinking hard about how can we prevent these kinds of things again, looking at 30 miles of a watercourse and having this great plan, but then not having any money, but then as sort of the winds of the state or the evolution of the progress in the state of Texas, to have state driven planning. We've had water planning, they call it bottom up for a long time, where it's done regionally instead of from the state as a whole. So they recently developed these regional flood planning as well. And to be able to have those plans trickle up from the community to the state and to become eligible for funding in that way. And honestly, it was community development block grants, CDBG, we call them. So when some of that money became available after Hurricane Harvey is when these plans that were developed after Hurricane Allison were able to enter design and construction. So to see that work moving now is a lot of properties that are low to moderate income are finally getting to benefit from this sort of holistic look at things, right. Instead of a single project or a single bit of infrastructure, kind of looking across to make the region as a whole stronger and benefiting more people, that's one of the things. Again, it's very slow moving, but it is a very exciting success. [01:02:57] Speaker B: So what kind of techniques do you think, Lisa, have helped in bringing this type of thing to pass, you know, in terms of, like, visioning and engagement with the community members? [01:03:09] Speaker A: I think that's a good point. Some of it, I think it really kind of starts with one person, right, that has a passion and the ability to communicate and bring others as on board. This one in particular, I'm not certain if it started in the agency or in the community, but certainly those elements found each other, those in the agency and in the community that were really pushing for a change, pushing for a way to do things differently, to be able to do these studies and fund these studies and to kind of have them to move forward in that incremental nature, looking at the big picture, but taking those small steps. And I think as you do those small steps and you sort of win successes, then you bring more and different elements along. Some of it comes to don't let a good disaster go to waste. Right? [01:04:10] Speaker B: What a saying. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, I've heard it many times, and I forget the both true and attributed speakers of it, but I think that idea is when something really does take a group or an area by surprise, or even if not by surprise, just really unplanned or unimagined. Right. We spend a lot of our day and very day to day, but when something exceeds our imagination or we just see the horror, that is really the time to strike. Right. Well, that iron is hot. There's a lot of push. There's a lot of support. There's a lot of shock, and it helps break out of the normal. So if you have been trying to make changes and been trying to compile little bits of this plan and this project and this plan to come together, when you have that work already teed up, so to speak, and then there is a big change for one reason or another, then it helps you sort of move on to that next step. And of course, you know, communicating with not only your community, but others who are doing those similar changes. You find great ideas. We're talking about some of your other guests, and I love looking forward and looking back. And I just recently read one of my colleagues talking about going to the community rather than summoning them, you know, to speak. Right. Understanding how to work asynchronously to let people weigh in when they have an opportunity, as opposed to Tuesday at 03:00 at such and such location, you know, which works for some, but not for all. [01:06:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. Now, what would you say, you know, both personally and speaking for your company, Lockwood, Andrews and Newman? And I know I've said that wrong. [01:06:14] Speaker A: New Nam, excuse me. [01:06:17] Speaker B: What would you say are your sort of like your biggest learnings that you would like to communicate, like, globally, and what would you like to leave the audience with? [01:06:26] Speaker A: I think, again, that idea of connections. Right. There's a lot of cities who are part of resilient cities network. I think a lot of people are thinking about change or thinking about the things that they want or thinking about how to make things better. Right. Again, you can start where you are, I think that goes to the idea of start anywhere, right? You can make one small change for resilience, and that can lead you to more support and more engagement and more ideas for the next one. So certainly at Lan Lockwood, Andrews Newnham, we are looking to how to bring funding, bring ideas, and to maybe look at, say, a simple project, right? Maybe we're just doing a small pump station or something. But if you are aware of the greater efforts across a bayou or due to flooding or due to a power outage, it helps you think and offer that up, you know, so for the incremental cost to raise the foundation or to connect to natural gas, to power a generator, those kinds of things that you're not just duplicating, having lots of extra infrastructure, but looking at those good design thoughts, how can we use what we have? How can we do what we're already doing as good design? And how can it be applicable for a resilience grant or for renewing infrastructure, grant, those kinds of things to bring a few more dollars to offset the project, to bring a couple of ideas to allow it to be flexible, to look at. You know, maybe there's a chance of wildfire or something like that, that you can do a little bit of hardening to have a small change to a small project that helps make that infrastructure system overall a little bit hardier, a little bit more resilient, and a little bit more sustainable for the community. [01:08:47] Speaker B: Brilliant, Lisa. I think that's been ever so insightful and useful to the listeners that we know we have in the audience. Do you have any final words? [01:08:59] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. I think just to stay excited, right. To kind of the idea of a minute for resilience, right. If you are feeling really low, if you are feeling worn down, assuming that you have survived whatever your latest disaster was, so when you're in a space of tranquility, you can look around and see what things should I be prepared for, what things can I help out for? Or what things have other people done that I can borrow and that I can bring in? And to not just think about it from a pure architecture standpoint, but to look at the landscape, to do the planning, to think how does this affect mobility? How are the housing impacts of the people who work here, or childcare, or the water and the wastewater, the garbage collection? All of those things really play together. So to step outside your very detailed, very technical efforts and just look around to see how does this fit into the rest of what's happening. [01:10:12] Speaker B: Fantastic, Lisa. That's very positive and really useful advice to leave this particular episode on. Thank you so much. [01:10:21] Speaker A: Oh, thank you so much. [01:10:22] Speaker B: This is constructive voices. [01:10:25] Speaker A: Constructive voices, the podcast for the construction people with news, views and expert interviews.