Stormwater quality offsets -the end or a new beginning for WSUD?

Offsetting is a common practice in Australia to allow economic development where there is an over-riding community benefit by permitting a development to contribute to the establishment of compensatory works outside the development boundary. Governing bodies have established policies that prescribe strict rules on the use of offsets including where compensatory works can be undertaken, offsetting ratios to account for temporal factors and risk/uncertainty, and legal instruments to secure tenure over offset areas to ensure enduring benefits. Stormwater quality offsets are relatively new in Australia with only a few jurisdictions having working schemes, such as Melbourne Water's Stormwater Quality Offset Scheme. Pressure is building however on other jurisdictions to develop stormwater quality offsets policy and operating frameworks. In large part this pressure is in response to growing concern from Local Governments that current water sensitive urban design solutions are not delivering the expected environmental and urban design benefits. Local Governments are also becoming increasingly concerned about the building cost burden to ratepayers to maintain and renew the extensive portfolio of small distributed WSUD technologies transferred from development. This paper considers the role of stormwater quality offsets in delivering improved environmental and urban design outcomes from economic development and explores some of the contributing factors that have led to Local Government's questioning the effectiveness of WSUD to deliver environmental improvement and enhanced urban amenity. It will be argued that stormwater quality offsets can play a role in achieving sustainable economic development but not without a rigorous policy and planning framework to govern when and how they should be applied and who can participate.