The Credit Valley Conservation’s (CVC) smart blue roof, produced in partnership with consultant Enviro-Stewards Inc., has been awarded a 2025 Clean50 Top Project Award.
The Clean50 Top Project Award is amongst the awards announced annually by Delta Management Group and Canada’s Clean50 organization. The purpose of the award is to recognize the best sustainability-oriented projects completed in Canada over the prior two years. Project winners are chosen based on five criteria including: impactful, innovative, inspiring, informative and readily imitated.
“Credit Valley Conservation is proud to receive this award,” says Phil James, senior manager of Integrated Water Management at Credit Valley Conservation. “The smart blue roof technology has proven to be a powerful tool for flood mitigation as our climate continues to change. It has captured and stored intense rainfall events that caused flooding in many parts of the Greater Toronto Area. We look forward to working with municipal partners and private landowners to educate them about this technology and help them to develop infrastructure that reduces the risk of flooding and erosion in our communities.”
On May 10, 2024, Credit Valley Conservation celebrated the construction completion of its smart blue roof at its head office location in Mississauga. The smart blue roof technology uses control logic to decide how captured rainwater is best used. The smart technology will determine whether to hold the water until it evaporates, providing cooling benefits to the building, or to send rainwater to a harvesting tank where it can be reused for non-potable purposes, or to release the rainwater slowly into the municipal stormwater system, reducing the risk of flooding, stream erosion and other ecological impacts.
“The smart blue roof project completed by Credit Valley Conservation, in partnership with Enviro-Stewards Inc., drives energy and water savings,” says Gavin Pitchford, CEO, Delta Management Group. “The project’s measurable impact, demonstrated innovation and ability to inspire others to imitate it are what made this project stand out ahead of over 100 other nominees we considered.”
The Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) main office has a large, flat roof, making it an ideal place to implement a smart blue roof system for stormwater management. Blue roofs detain stormwater, releasing it slowly after rainfall events, allowing it to pond and evaporate, or in some cases storing it for non-potable reuse.
Preliminary findings and highlights from CVC’s first smart blue roof operating season include:
- Successfully captured and retained rainwater from all storm events that occurred from May through to October, 2024.
- A water balance from August 18 to September 6, 2024, indicates that 51 per cent of water was evaporated; 42 per cent harvested and used for toilet flushing and seven per cent released into the municipal system as dry weather flow.
- A 75 per cent reduction of potable water used for toilet flushing at CVC head office.
CVC’s smart blue roof system will be shut down for the season on October 31, 2024. During the off-season, other benefits will be studied and data further analyzed. CVC will continue to assess the real-world performance of the smart blue roof system and understand how to scale-up this technology to the industrial, commercial and institutional sector.
Learn more about the smart blue roof project here: cvc.ca/SmartBlueRoof.
Further information on the Clean50 awards is available here:www.clean50.com
Featured image credit: On May 10, 2024, Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) celebrated the construction completion and commissioning of its new smart blue roof. CVC’s smart blue roof is Canada’s first International Code Council (ICC) compliant smart blue roof.
