Seneca Polytechnic
OP-22: Rainwater Management

Low Impact Development (LID) is an aspect of green infrastructure (GI) and is the practice of designing a built environment, including green spaces, which aid our built environment in minimizing the impact on natural water cycles. It emphasizes water conservation and quality and is intended to help green spaces retain, filter and percolate water into the ground rather than resulting in stormwater runoff. This often includes green infrastructure projects like bioswales, water retention features, green roofs and permeable pavement. It also includes passive design including cooling tree cover, native and low resource intensive vegetation that require minimal irrigation after the integration period. To minimize water use for our landscapes, drip irrigation is used wherever possible.

Core tenants of LID are as follows:
- Preserve natural areas wherever possible
- Minimize development impact on hydrology
- Plan to prohibit stormwater runoff to exit the site
- Implement LID methods in a decentralized and potentially microscale manner
- Implement pollution/effluent prevention measures

All proponents must demonstrate how the design embeds these principles. Furthermore, the following standards are included. With “*” provided on mandatory responses:

*All energy and water consuming equipment/products will be required to be third party verified as water efficient i.e., Watersense or equivalent
- Yes
- N/A

*Select all forms of low impact development this project will pursue in efforts to reduce water demand from landscaping in addition to improving site ecological integrity and reducing heat islands:
- Native species
- Drought tolerant species
- Bioswales
- Permeable pavements
- Water recovery systems
- Other

*Outdoor water use reduction projections included in design
- Yes
- No
- N/A

Will use the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) WaterSense Water Budget Tool or local equivalent to project outdoor water use reductions
- Yes
- No

*Demonstrated how the design will present the water flow on site and its plans to place measures (vegetated slope tops, bioswales, rain gardens, etc.) necessary to limit stormwater overflow and demonstrate how these measures can determine this result. See LEED BD + C, Sustainable Sites, Rainwater Management, Appendix D for more information
- Yes
- No
- N/A

Seneca has created Landscape Design and Maintenance Standards that provide both standards and an assessment tool for external landscape designers or maintenance contractors to ensure all landscape design and maintenance integrate principles of low impact development to align with Seneca’s principles of sustainability, specifically under the topic of land and water. These principles are as follows: 
- Low Impact Development 
- Soil health & integrity
- Ecological Integrity & Biodiversity 
- Stormwater reduction and management
- Water demand reduction

These standards are also embedded within the new Sustainability Impact Statement (SIS) form that is provided to all proposed projects at the planning stage. This form includes all sustainability related policies and standards, an environmental assessment and considerations for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), First Peoples @ Seneca and Academics & Research. This tool aims to ensure all projects include sustainability at the project planning stage, so it is considered in the scope and cost. Project teams will then be contacted by the Office of Sustainability (SoS) to determine where they can fill in any gaps to improve their sustainability performance or advise revisions to project design where there may be environmental issues. Results from sustainability assessments are to be made publicly available with notes for planned future improvements, which further incentivizes projects with high sustainable performance.  

These are being used for the creation of the upcoming Landscape Design for Newnham Campus informally but will be formally integrated into the future RFP process and published early 2024.