2024 Annual Meeting Materials
Detailed Agenda with Slides & Resource Links

Monday May 6

4:30pm – 6:00pm [Ballroom]: Welcome Reception and Opening Remarks

Tuesday May 7

• 7:45am – 8:00am [Ballroom]: Opening Remarks & Announcements
• 8:00am – 9:15am [Ballroom] [Presentation Slides]: Shaping the Future: Leveraging Two Decades of Lessons Learned to Accelerate GSI Innovation through the Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange Framework with Greenprint Partners and the Exchange. About: Scaling up green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) as a practice requires a thoughtful and well-structured approach. The Exchange is collaborating with members to distill over 20 years of learning in this nascent industry as an organizing framework of GSI principles, best practices and case examples. The Framework is a starting point for what happens next: developing the strategies that will support innovation and continuous learning. This session will provide members an overview of the development of the framework to date, and serve as an opportunity to get involved with the development of case studies and best practices for two of the nine framework topics.
• 9:30am – 10:45am [Ballroom] [Presentation Slides]: Regional Member GSI Panel with King County, Kitsap County, Seattle Public Utilities, and Vancouver, BC. About: To kick things off, we’re featuring a panel of local Exchange members from around the Salish Sea. Panelists will be connecting the dots among the annual meeting’s overall themes, focusing on the unique connections to green infrastructure and stormwater management in the Pacific Northwest, including salmon restoration, climate adaptation, equity, collaboration with Tribal nations/First Nations, and green job creation. These practitioners will discuss their agencies’ work in integrative planning, elevating the value of the public sector, and sharing the benefits of participation in the Green Infrastructure Leadership Exchange.
• 11:00am – 12:30pm: Concurrent Sessions
  • Discovery room [Presentation Slides]: Lake City Floodplain Park Restoration: Lessons Learned & Learning with Mid Sound Fisheries, Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle Parks and Recreation. About: In 2019, Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle Parks and Recreation partnered to jointly acquire a 1-acre property on the North Branch of Thornton Creek to develop Lake City Floodplain Park for the mutual benefit of both departments. The departments committed to developing a floodplain reconnection project benefiting water quality, in-stream and riparian habitat, and flood storage, while creating an accessible natural area and amenities for the community within a heavily urbanized and underserved area. Together with Mid Sound Fisheries Enhancement Group, the partners work together to further engagement, design, and site management planning that promotes multiple stakeholder goals. The unique collaboration empowers the three groups to move together as a collective that understands its differences and acts on its commonalities to develop new parkland and offer an exciting framework for urban greenspace and restoration projects.
  • Enterprise room [Presentation Slide]: Community-Based GSI and Workforce Development with Dirt Corps, Port of Seattle, and King County. About: King County, Port of Seattle, and Dirt Corps will tell their story of building Equity in Community through Workforce Development. The Regional Partnership’s shared goals are dismantling structural barriers to ensure that historically oppressed communities have access to the resources they need to thrive. The panel will talk about their commitments to strategic workforce development programs, access to green careers and training opportunities – supported by programs implementing GSI in the Community.
• 12:30pm: box lunch provided
• 1:15pm: load on busses
• 2:00pm-4:00pm site visits to two concurrent tour routes
  • About Aurora Bridge Bioswales, Fremont Troll:
    • Contaminated stormwater from Seattle’s Aurora Bridge was once discharged untreated to Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal. This discharge impacted migrating salmon and resident orcas that depend on those salmon as a primary food source. A multiple organization partnership came together to treat runoff through bioswales adjacent to the bridge. All three phases of this installation are managing the 2 million gallons that flow directly from the Aurora bridge into the ship canal between Lake Union and Puget Sound and, at the same time, developing an innovative model for a public-private partnership addressing contaminated stormwater from Pacific Northwest bridges.
    • Fremont Troll and below the Aurora Bridge: In 1990, a community received a Troll but it was surrounded by two acres of unused right-of-way left behind by the construction of the Aurora Bridge. For decades this area became an illegal dumping and vandalism eyesore until the community banded together in a grassroots effort to partner with local agencies. Now you can visit the infamous Troll and explore the ever-evolving adjacent hillside that the Friends of the Trolls Knoll and its dedicated volunteer group have been slowly improving one grant at a time! Improvements include erosion control and improved access at the Troll, new art installations, educational signage, buffer planting, an experimental mushroom garden by Salish Mushrooms to improve the forest ecosystem, and a mural wall installation.
  • About SEA Street/Venema and Ballard Natural Drainage System (NDS):
    • The SEA Street/Venema NDS was completed in 2001. This site was Seattle’s and United States first Right of Way (ROW) reconstruction project designed to manage the stormwater runoff on the block with GSI. Fifteen years later, the Venema Natural Drainage System project was constructed to provide regional stormwater management for an 80 acre basin and reflects an evolution in design, and in particular the plant palette. The design of both projects required close collaboration with Seattle’s Department of Transportation to narrow the street to accommodate large bioretention facilities.
    • The Ballard NDS project constructed bioretention facilities along the ROW in the Ballard neighborhood to help reduce combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This project was located in an areas with good infiltrating soils and used “pit drains”, essentially infiltration trenches, under the bioretention facilities to promote infiltration. This was Seattle’s first application using structural soil cells under the sidewalk adjacent to the bioretention cells to allow the bioretention surface to extend under the sidewalk and increase cell capacity.
• 4:00pm: dinner on own.

Wednesday May 8 

• 7:45am – 8:00am [Discovery room]: Opening Remarks & Announcements
• 8:00am – 9:15am [Discovery room] [Presentation Slides & Member Feedback]: Exchange Membership & Programing: Evolution & Expansion. About: This session will briefly review the rationale for the SPPC’s decision to expand membership to new sectors and discuss the implications for programming. Participants–split in Members [Ballroom] and Associate/Non-Member [Creator room] groups will have the opportunity to review and refine changes to Exchange programming that members proposed during listening sessions that the SPPC held last January and February. The information gathered here will be used by the staff and the SPPC to evolve programming and other aspects of the Exchange’s work for the coming year.
• 9:30am – 10:45am: Concurrent Sessions
  • Discovery Room: Equity in Action: Transforming Your Lens for GSI Work. About: Oftentimes equity work feels like a series of shallow check marks and is approached in a way that replicates patterns of oppression. In this session we will engage in various ways of learning and knowing to support participants in developing and integrating a nuanced equity lens into their GSI work. Participants will reflect on their personal > organizational > cultural capacity for equitable change and cultivate an internal awareness from which they can identify and act towards transformation. Some of our strategies include: (1) relationship-building among participants, (2) kinetic, tactile, visual, and verbal learning and processing, and (3) embodied practices from the Somatics field and Theatre of the Oppressed. This workshop is led by Danielle Marie Jones and Amie Riley; they are contractors from ROOTSRISE LLC who are building an equity course for the Exchange.
  • Enterprise room [Presentation Description & Agenda]: Reframing the GSI Narrative. About: In this session, Exchange Members and Trust for Public Land will review why there is a need to change the way we talk about GSI to get support for its implementation. We will also learn about a new tool from Water Hub that can help to reframe those discussions. Examples will be offered on how reframing has played out in several of its GSI projects. Finally, participants will have the opportunity to put Water Hub’s tool into practice on a sample project.
• 11:00am – 12:30pm: Concurrent Session
  • Discovery room [Presentation Slides]: Co-Benefits Guides with the Exchange Members, The Nature Conservancy, One Water Econ, and Radbridge. About: Since early 2021, an advisory committee of Exchange members in partnership with The Nature Conservancy and One Water Econ developed a series of GSI Co-Benefit Guides that focus on (1) Flood Risk Reduction, (2) Green Jobs & Economic Development, (3) Ecosystem & Biodiversity, (4) Heat Stress Reduction, and (5) Transportation. These guides, plus a compendium of existing resources and tools, will allow stormwater practitioners to evaluate, measure, and integrate co-benefits information into their design, implementation, and financial models. This session will focus on the collaborative process of this project and there will also be an introduction of the guides and the supporting online calculator. Participants in this session will be asked (1) how the materials might be used and marketed, (2) what additional topics a partnership take on, and (3) what more could be housed at the GSI Impact Hub.
  • Enterprise room [Presentation Slides]: Public/Private Partnerships with Site Story, Lotus Water, Herrera Environmental Consultants, Greenprint Partners, Earth Economics, and Corvias Infrastructure Solutions. About: This panel features a discussion with six representatives from the private sector, all engaged in various capacities and evolutions of applying public-private partnerships and the range of unique contracting vehicles deployed to move that work forward. The conversation will include a review of definitions – what distinguishes traditional public-private partnerships from community-benefit performance-based contracting. Each of the practitioners will speak to their engagement in these efforts, breaking down the components, financing, the how and why, and highlighting the connections to the annual meeting’s themes of equity, green job creation, and more. The content is designed to provide insights and guidance for those representing jurisdictions considering applying these unique contracting approaches.
• 12:30pm: box lunch provided
• 1:15pm: load on busses
• 2:00pm – 4:00pm: site visits as single group to Equinox Studios, Gateway Park North and Mini Mart City Park
• 5:00pm – 8:00pm [Ballroom]: Dinner at the hotel with Keynote, GSI picture raffle, recognition of Exchange member service, and closing remarks
  • Keynote Title: Tribal Treaty Rights and How They Support Riparian Habitat, Salmon & Water Quality
  • About Keynote: Dave Herrera is a member of the Skokomish Indian Tribe and serves as the tribe’s fisheries and wildlife policy representative. Herrera has worked in tribal fisheries and natural resources management for more than 40 years. Over the last 10 years, Herrera has taken on habitat issues through forums such as the Puget Sound Partnership’s Ecosystem Coordination Board and Salmon Recovery Council. He also was appointed to the Puget Sound Partnership’s Leadership Council and was a member of the state Forest Practices Board for 12 years. He chairs the NWIFC’s Environmental Policy Committee and the Tribal Management Conference of the Puget Sound National Estuary Program
  • Materials: Habitat Protection Reports Papers List

Thursday May 9 

• 9:30am: meet at hotel lobby to walk to waterfront tour starting location
• 10:00am – 11:30am: Walking tour of Waterfront that concludes at Pike Place. About: After constructing a large diameter tunnel below the Seattle waterfront, the 1950s-era viaduct was removed and Alaskan Way is being reconstructed and revisioned as a linear park and a new surface road with improved pedestrian realm and tree canopy. Multiple configurations of green stormwater infrastructure are incorporated into the project, primarily for water quality treatment. This tour will start near Colman dock, moving north along Alaskan Way toward Pike Place Market, viewing multiple configurations of bioretention and stopping for discussion. We will review both the design process and BMP details. Lunch and beverage options are available in Pike Place Market when the tour concludes. Safety note: Closed toed shoes and high-visibility clothing are encouraged for safety. The tour will use active crosswalks in a high-traffic area and will only visit publicly accessible portions of the waterfront. The tour will not enter areas under active construction.