Silver Maples Subdivision Rain Garden & Retention Facilities

Project Highlights

Portrait Homes turned to KWL for a new and sustainable engineering solution to protect Anderson Creek, a pristine creek with wild Coho and Chinook salmon populations, from the hydrologic impacts of the Silver Ridge residential development.

Source controls were designed with careful modifications to particular site challenges including:

• Steep slopes of up to 10%
• Poor draining glacial till soils
• High local rainfall, and
• DFO high environmental standards.

The KWL solution included the first linear roadside rain gardens in British Columbia.  The Silver Maples design was a significant step forward for sustainable development in British Columbia.  It has become an internationally known success for stormwater source controls in subdivision development.  The source controls used on the project have been adopted by Metro Vancouver as the sustainable source controls to use for all new development and redevelopment in the region.  Moreover, it has proven to be attractive to home buyers, and has moved sustainable development forward as an affordable reality that adds to the property value of lots.

A four-year performance monitoring program of the installed source controls has verified that the rain gardens meet the design objectives and has proven that, when properly designed, source controls can work in challenging conditions.