**Abstract Text**
The Safe Clean Water Program (SCWP) has focused on providing L.A. County with a multi-benefit approach to stormwater management to improve water quality while also increasing drought preparedness, prioritizing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), and enhancing community investment. To meet these diverse goals, SCWP scoring criteria, evaluation processes, and project guidelines were developed to incentivize projects that simultaneously address water, environmental, MS4 compliance, and social issues. However, initial program implementation faced extensive debate and public comments concerning the balance of these goals. To facilitate these discussions , Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA) conducted a pilot assessment to determine the extent that SCWP guidance, criteria, structure, and processes are successfully driving meaningful progress toward SCWP Goals. ARLA’s SCWP Working Group Project brought together an influential group of stakeholders to build consensus around definitions and metrics to facilitate the pursuit of balanced watershed projects that meet the tenets of the SCWP Goals. A robust and collaborative scientific approach was utilized to identify metrics that best represent  SCWP Goals and test these metrics on a 15-square-mile portion of L.A. County to determine how different stormwater project types can advance these metrics in meaningful ways.
This presentation will highlight the process used in this Project and share the results of the pilot study that provided novel watershed “signatures” to aid decision making across the spectrum of potential project implementation scenarios.  Results are useful and scalable to stormwater managers also trying to produce a diverse, balanced, and equitable mix of stormwater solutions in watersheds anywhere.



Using Watershed Science to Build Consensus and Maximize the Multi-Benefits from L.A. County’s Safe Clean Water Program (Room 301 D, Monday 7th, 10:30am-12:00pm)

The International Low Impact Development Conference highlights interdisciplinary practice, research, and implementation of Low Impact Development (LID), Green Infrastructure (GI), Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) and Water Sensitive Urban Designs (WSUD). The focus will be on using our past and present understanding of LID to tune management programs, design practice, and operation and maintenance into the future.