Anna Bernstad Saraiva
Anna Bernstad Saraiva, PhD. Worked for MKB Fastighets AB from 2013 to 2014 as a project manager for the Eco-city Augustenborg as well as being an environmental project manager between 2017 and 2020.
of property Christer Sandgren, who was based in Augustenborg, believed such a move would not benefit the area. The large workplace brought life and movement to the district and was important to keep there (Sandgren, 2018). Peter Lindhqvist, a Service Department manager, was also not inter-ested in moving. This shared interest was the seed from which the Eco-city grew.
MKB had two main goals during the Eco-city project: to increase the area’s appeal and to reduce the risk of basement floods. To tackle basement floods, bosses had two main options. They could separate wastewater from stormwater by building a new underground drainage network, or they could split rainwater out and direct it straight from drainpipes and hard surfaces into an open stormwater system. The second option would also make the outdoor environment greener and more varied, increase well-being for the residents and, in the long run, improve the area’s appeal. Keeping stormwater in a surface-level system therefore met both goals.
Designing the stormwater system and outdoor environment
Malmö’s water utility VA-verket was also positive to the idea of local stormwater management in Augustenborg. Peter Stahre1 had worked at the utility since 1984 as an expert in stormwater management and was the project’s driving force.
A landscape architect’s office provided the design and was tasked with liaising with residents about planned changes. While the open stormwater sys-tem was being planned, resources were also be-ing invested to renovate the area’s gardens. This process placed great emphasis on involving the residents in the development of the area and fos-tering a sense of pride, identity and a profile that would bring more outsiders to the district, where they would feel at home and hopefully stay. The landscape architects that MKB hired to design the gardens were therefore also asked to hold an active dialogue with residents about their desires, while also presenting ideas and proposals at large meet-ings in the area. Different architects were hired by MKB and VA-verket to design the gardens and the stormwater systems, but they still collaborat-ed and at meetings with residents the plans were presented together.
According to Christer Sandgren, there was an awareness at VA-verket that the stormwater sys-tem should be seen as a pilot project. There was no information on how much care and mainte-nance would be needed over time. VA-verket (or at least Peter Stahre) seemingly believed that the cost savings of an open system, compared to build-ing underground pipelines, were so great that they justified increased operating costs. Based on this, VA-verket took responsibility for maintaining the stormwater system during the warranty period.
The stormwater system was constructed in two stages. Lessons had already been learnt from the first stage when work started on the second. By that time, different views had emerged on how mainte-nance costs should be handled after the warranty expired. VA-verket wanted those responsible for maintenance in each area to take over when the warranty ended, while landowners assumed that maintenance would remain VA-verket’s respon-sibility as it operates underground stormwater pipes. During this time a new area manager was appointed by MKB (Sandgren, 2018).
As a result, the system’s design was reassessed, and focus was increasingly on how it would work after being put into operation. A contractor was hired to design and plan this stage. Unlike in phase one, where several actors agreed that future management and care were not the focus (Sand-gren, 2018; Folkesson, 2018), more emphasis was placed on these considerations in phase two. As well as being able to handle rainwater, the system needed to be easy to maintain and not bring exces-sive operating costs for those responsible for local maintenance.
Responsibility for maintaining a blue-green infrastructure
When water that was previously transported in underground pipes is brought to surface-level, it sparks questions about who is responsible for man-aging the system. Experience from Augustenborg shows that it no longer obviously falls to the water utility (VA-verket). In Augustenborg, the system’s
maintenance has been managed as part of the out-door environment by the relevant property owner.
Despite the fact there are only a few different man-aging organisations in the Eco-city Augustenborg, splitting care and maintenance responsibilities is relatively complex. The system leads water away from paved surfaces on municipal engineering land (part of the City of Malmö’s Internal Services Department) to plots owned by MKB and in part on to municipal parkland. The area is also home to pavements and cycle tracks which are owned and managed by the municipality. Water runs off these paths and into open stormwater canals on built plots but also public water and sewage systems.
The Property Management, Streets and Parks De-partment manage pedestrian and bicycle lanes as well as park areas, while VA Syd (formerly VA-ver-ket) manages general water and sewerage facilities and is responsible for their care. Meanwhile, MKB owns and is responsible for maintaining the part of the system that is located on its property.
When the water is brought to the surface, boundaries between the water supply system and the outdoor environment also blur. In Augusten-borg, managing the stormwater system has become an integral part of managing the area’s outdoor en-vironment, a task that falls to contractors. When the system’s first stage was completed, the Streets and Parks Department and MKB used different local contractors. This meant that the bordering areas risked being overlooked and different levels of care might be given to different parts. It also created a risk that residents would not understand how the outdoor environment was managed, which in turn worsens engagement between daily users and the manager.
Based on the idea that increased collaboration would benefit residents, VA-verket the Streets and Parks Department and MKB signed a collabora-tion agreement in May 2004. It was based on us-ing the same contractor to maintain areas owned by both MKB and the Streets and Parks Depart-ment in Augustenborg. The agreeDepart-ment also meant that MKB would coordinate engagement with
1 Peter Stahre died in 2009 and, according to other interviewees, played a major role in forming the open stormwater system in Augustenborg.
When the stormwater system is suddenly made visible and forms a part of people’s everyday environment, totally new demands are placed on how it is managed and cared for.
Image by Sanna Dolck
residents and the contractor on behalf of the Streets and Parks Department and VA-verket. Fi-nally, VA-verket promised to maintain pipeline outlets and inlets and to develop maintenance instructions for the stormwater system. The agree-ment would be followed up once a quarter and extended annually if agreed by all parties.
A supplementary agreement in existing pro-curement rules allowed the Streets and Parks De-partment to use the same contractor as MKB. An analysis of the collaboration by academics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) from 2007 concluded that the partnership worked well, and facilitated communication between resi-dents, customers and contractors. Using the same contractor also created a more cohesive impression of how the area was managed and improved the quality of the Streets and Parks Department’s are-as beyond what had been ordered. This is because MKB had high standards of care for its areas, mean-ing maintenance staff were permanently based in the area. When urgent measures were needed in the areas controlled by the Streets and Parks De-partment, they were addressed more quickly than before. And when, for example, lawns were being mowed, no lines were drawn between what was owned by the Streets and Parks Department and what was owned by MKB. The requirement from MKB for frequent care set the standard.
The collaboration agreement did not tie the parties to share a maintenance contractor in the future, but only applied to current procurement.
There was therefore no plan how the collabora-tion would continue when contracts went back to tender. Over the years new contractors were hired in different procurement rounds. Those individ-uals who drew up the agreement had for various reasons left their organisations, and in time the agreement was forgotten. However, it has not been terminated by either side. At present, MKB would like to see an agreement that clearly defines areas of responsibility and a renewed dialogue on cooperation on procurement of maintenance (Strömbeck, 2018).
Adjustments and maintenance over time A fundamental difference between underground and open stormwater systems is that the lat-ter must function even when there is little rain.
From a water management perspective, this is a secondary consideration - instead the focus lies on the system's ability to divert and delay large water flows. From a management perspective, at-tention is needed during the vast majority of the year, when water levels in the system are far be-low the 20-year rainfall events which the system is large enough to handle. Ironically, therefore, water shortages are one of MKB’s biggest challenges in Augustenborg.
The fear of basement floods probably drove the decision to design all canals and ponds with im-permeable bottoms so stormwater would not leak into the cellars. From a water management per-spective, this seems an exaggerated fear that made the project more expensive. From a management perspective, this has probably been essential for maintaining a functional system while providing an aesthetic and recreational value even in periods without torrential rain.
No care instructions had been ordered from the stormwater system’s designer. According to the designer there was a lack of awareness of how to maintain the system, and that there would need to be an acceptance that ponds occasionally dry out.
From a management perspective, there was an in-itial view that the system would largely look after itself. A couple of years after the first stages of the system were completed, residents had complained about some parts of it (Larsson, 2018). The pub-lication “Uppfattningar om öppen dagvattenhan-tering i Augustenborg Malmö – Utvärdering efter några års drift” (Perceptions of open stormwater management in Augustenborg, Malmö - An evalu-ation after some years of operevalu-ation”) (Delshammar et al., 2004) explains what happened based on in-terviews with 15 residents from the area:
“Among the problems of the stormwater retro-fit were primarily littering in the ponds and canals, vandalism and bad odours coming from stagnant water. Some residents are put off by dry canals and ponds.”
The maintenance staff that worked in the area during the first years after stage one was completed also described algal blooms and bad smells caused by stagnant pond water (Larsson, 2018). The manager believed these problems were unaccept-able, and a number of changes were implemented.
As a result, the large pond in the Arla block was split into two smaller ponds that were connect-ed by a canal. Water was pumpconnect-ed from the lower to the higher pond, and then flowed back down in the canal. A fountain was also installed in the pond that was on higher ground to oxygenate the water and ensure it did not stagnate. The grassy area that leads to the ponds was also sloped, let-ting the water level rise significantly before caus-ing any problems, and ensurcaus-ing the ponds can still house large volumes of water. Most of the time, however, there is much less water, so the overflow mechanism is not required. The design can there-fore handle both downpours and long periods of drought. This need for flexibility is probably one
of the largest challenges in the design of open stormwater systems.
One factor that reinforced the perception in MKBs management that the designers of the system intended for it to “look after itself”, was the high degree of automation they included, for example, in how ponds were refilled. However, it later became clear that an overreliance on advan-ced technology had created vulnerabilities. Only a few years after the system was built, large parts of the mechanisms were broken. The advanced tech-nology was also expensive, so broken components were not replaced. About a decade after the system was installed, there was a push to fix this. Sonny Larsson, a water expert who had worked at MKB since 1980, led the work to refurbish the ponds.
The goal was to create a system that was cost-ef-fective from a management perspective. Broken automated systems were replaced with simple and robust ways of oxygenating and circulating water in and between ponds. But some parts of the system could not be fixed. One such example
Dry canals are quickly viewed as dirty and dull by residents in the area. Image by Johanna Sörensen
The large Arla pond was divided into two smaller units that are connected by a canal. Image by Marc Malmqvist/City of Malmö
was the pump in the so-called salmon ladder that runs along Lönngatan, which moved water from a nearby pond and to the top of the feature. The bottom of the salmon ladder is permeable, and the pump essentially drained it when it was switched on. Fixing this, and other similar problems in the initial design was judged to be too resource-inten-sive (Larsson, 2018).
The evolution of maintenance efforts The extensive efforts made about ten years af-ter the system was commissioned came with an increased understanding that this was not a self-maintaining system, but that it in fact has extensive maintenance needs. Suchun Huang had been employed by MKB to care for the compost machines in the Eco-city Augustenborg’s recycling houses. In 2007, a decision was made to remove the compost machines. This coincided with up-grades to the stormwater system and the transition to more manual management. Suchun Huang was appointed as a property maintenance officer who focused on the outdoor environment and was given responsibility for the ponds. Much of the
management of the Eco-city’s ponds is now per-formed by in-house staff at MKB.
Today, Suchun Huang spends about a quarter of her work hours maintaining the ponds and the rest supervising the recycling houses and the care of the rest of the outdoor environment. Howev-er, the time the ponds demand is unevenly split over the year. During the spring, the fountains are taken out and installed in the ponds. All hoses are checked and broken or worn out parts are re-placed. All oxygenation balls are cleaned. During the summer, a lot of time is spent removing algae from the ponds and keeping them free from de-bris. During the autumn, the strainer screens for the water to the pumps are washed and when win-ter comes, fountains are removed to avoid freezing (Huang, 2018).
Pond management developed over the years, as knowledge increased. Oxygenation and circu-lation techniques that were installed over time have reduced the algal blooms but have far from completely stopped it. Putting on waders, get-ting into the ponds and fishing out the algae is therefore still a part of the maintenance routine.
Shortly after Suchun Huang took over responsi-bility for the ponds, she noticed some ponds con-tained a stringy algae that was much easier to catch than the gooey algae that dominated most of the ponds. She then tried transplanting the stringy al-gae to other ponds. It outcompeted its rivals and over time increasingly dominated more and more of the ponds. As a result, removing algae was far less time consuming. Pond fish also help to keep algae away and reduce maintenance needs. The first year that fountains and pumps had been in-stalled in the ponds, they were removed and stored during the winter - for fear they would otherwise freeze. Because the ponds were built to be shallow for safety reasons, they froze down to the bottom, killing many of the fish that had been released during the recent investments. Since then, only fountains are stored over winter. The pumps con-tinue throughout the year to stop the bottom of the ponds from freezing (Huang, 2018).
The presence of algae varies greatly between ponds. It is difficult to say why as there are no ob-vious reasons for the difference. Some ponds also have a layer of sludge that is significantly thicker than others. However, removing sludge and sed-iment from the ponds is too costly and difficult.
In one pond where the sludge omits a bad smell, MKB has recently installed a biological treatment plant. This plant (InterAct) uses bioblocks with a large active surface area which allows microorgan-isms to thrive and break down organic material.
Nutrients can then be absorbed by the aquatic plants that also live in the bioblocks. The effect of the treatment plant will be evaluated in the com-ing years.
Outsourced and in-house maintenance For MKB’s staff to spend so much time manag-ing the outdoor environment in Augustenborg is unique. In MKB’s other residential areas, it has outsourced the management for several years.
Contractors are procured in accordance with the Swedish Public Procurement Act and the agreements are time-limited. The contracts nor-mally run for two years, with a potential two-year extension. The framework of how the outdoor en-vironment is managed is therefore largely set in the tender documentation used during procurement.
Minor changes and additions to the management duties can be made during the contract period, as part of a dialogue between client and contractor.
Major changes, that involve more time or new equipment, may increase maintenance costs and require additional agreements. MKB has a tradi-tion of frequency-based maintenance specificatradi-tion - this includes the parts of outdoor management in Augustenborg that are contracted. Knowledge of the type and frequency of maintenance that a blue-green infrastructure require is therefore very important when drawing up tender specifications for maintenance contracts. This creates a need for good communication between managers with practical knowledge, and those who write the ten-der documents. In Augustenborg, communication
Fixing the pump in the so-called salmon stairs was one measure that was believed to be too resource-intensive
Image by Marc Malmqvist / City of Malmö
Biological purification using InterAct.
Image by Marc Malmqvist/City of Malmö
between the area managers and the central pro-curement office of MKB has largely gone through Åse Dannestam, the project manager for the Eco-city Augustenborg, who was hired by MKB in 2007. With her help, data has been developed and refined over the years, all while the client's know- ledge has increased.
For Augustenborg, there are also special in-structions on how to manage the outdoor envi-ronment, based on the unique conditions creat-ed by sustainable urban drainage system. These require the contractor to clean open gutters once a month and latticed drainage gutters are cleaned three times a year. The cleaning removes debris, leaves and other items that accumulate in the sys-tem. Litter must be removed from all ponds once a week. Furthermore, there is a major spring and autumn clean every year. In April, dried plant ma-terial is cut down and collected. Vegetation around and in the ponds is thinned in July and August, when about half of the plants are removed. The re-maining plants are removed in April the year after.
The competence and knowledge that has de-veloped over time within the management of the Eco-city Augustenborg is in many ways invaluable.
According to Sonny Larsson, all the area’s ponds are unique and must be treated differently to func-tion properly. Over time, the pond manager has learned how to care for them. Using in-house staff who are committed to the area and have time to build internal competence has therefore been an important factor for success. There are also diffi-culties associated with hiring a contractor because the turnover of people is higher and this means that knowledge does not build up over time.
Throwing water in the lake?
The ponds in the area create recreation opportuni-ties for residents and visitors. They also create local habitats for many fish, frogs and aquatic birds. Be-cause the rainwater evaporates and leaks in parts of the system, it is topped up with fresh water when there is little rain. This is mainly done by filling the ponds at Södra Grängesbergsgatan. There have
been attempts to find alternatives to using fresh water. One of the neighbourhood’s buildings leads its laundry water into the stormwater system. The water is cleaned by a biological treatment system developed by Alnarp Clear Water. The building’s washing machines use automatic detergent dosing systems which have been approved by Astma- och Allergiförbundet (the Asthma and Allergy Associa-tion) and meet the criteria for the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation’s “Bra Miljöval” ecolabel (“Good Environmental Choice”). After launching in 2013, tests for nitrogen, phosphorus, Chemi-cal Oxygen Demand (COD), BiochemiChemi-cal oxygen demand (BOD), pH and the presence of bacte-ria were performed several times in the first year.
Using these test results, the Environment Depart-ment allowed the washing water from the laun-dry room to continue being discharged into the stormwater system. But because getting permis-sion to release laundry water into the stormwater system is cumbersome and requires investments in pumping technology, no more laundry rooms have been connected.
Cost/benefit from a managerial perspective There has never been a complete assessment of the costs and benefits of Augustenborg’s open storm-water system. It is still too difficult to perform, because long term care and maintenance costs re-main uncertain, and many benefits are not finan-cially tangible.
The investment into Augustenborg in the late 1990s and early 2000s were partly financed by money from central government and the EU. But these external funds only covered 15% of the to-tal, estimated at about SEK 200 million. MKB contributed about half the remaining money, while the rest fell to the City of Malmö and wa-ter utility VA-verket (Rolfsdotwa-ter-Jansson, 2009).
The blue-green infrastructure cost approximately SEK 35 million and was paid for by MKB and VA-verket. Some of the stormwater costs covered combined investment which also benefited the outdoor environment.
The expense should be weighed against the fact that nearly all the residential gardens were remade during the project period. There was good reason to do this, as the gardens were rather run down.
But it was also necessary to create artificial slopes in the otherwise flat area. Augustenborg’s lack of natural slopes increased costs (Andersson, 2019).
From a managerial perspective, however, the cost of the stormwater system in the Eco-city has gone from being almost negligible - because VA-verket was responsible for maintaining the combined underground pipe network - to increas-ing cost to maintain the outdoor environment.
The cost of contracted maintenance rose approxi-mately 10%, while in-house work rose in cost by around 25%. For minor maintenance measures (replacing pumps, grills on smaller canals and so on) there is an annual budget, which sets aside around SEK 100,000 per year for smaller mainte-nance of the stormwater system. Larger measures, such as re-casting gutters, are carried out as indi-vidual projects which leads to a total maintenance cost of around SEK 150,000 per year (Strömbeck, 2018).
Augustenborg is therefore an area whose out-door environment MKB invests extra heavily in.
Compared with other similar parts of Malmö (Ny-dala, Kroksbäck and Segevång, where MKB owns large contiguous areas and most of the outdoor environment), spending on the outdoor environ-ment in Augustenborg was on average 34% higher over the three years 2015 to 2017 (based on data from MKB’s financial system, autumn 2018).
The benefits include reduced flooding costs, increased customer satisfaction, marketing val-ues and social benefits caused by increased urban biodiversity.
It can seem easy to invest in measures that will reduce the cost of floods. But despite the large sums invested in Augustenborg through the Eco-city
project, the flood problem has not ceased com-pletely. This is mainly because the sewage system is still the original one from 70 years ago, which can be penetrated by roots or filled with fatty deposits.
However, floods caused by heavy rain have clearly subsided. The property owner’s biggest savings are apparent during a downpour similar to the one during the end of August 2014, when Augusten-borg fared relatively well compared to other simi-lar areas in the vicinity. This also benefits the water utility by reducing the risk that mixed wastewater and stormwater would overflow at the treatment plant. Increasingly stringent demands to reduce overflow create a need for new investment and in-creased capacity to handle large amounts of rain in a short time.
At the same time, there are major benefits to designing the system in an aesthetically pleasing way, which creates a pleasant outdoor environ-ment all year round. Those who remember Au-gustenborg’s worn gardens, hard-packed soil and broken play areas of the 1990s, believe there is sig-nificant added value to be gained from a nicer out-door environment (Larsson, 2018 and Sandgren, 2018). Based on MKB’s customer survey in 2017, Augustenborg’s residents value their outdoor en-vironment more than the average area in its port-folio2. It is, however, difficult to price this because customer satisfaction is impacted by many factors.
The marketing value provided by the investment in Augustenborg is high, and has benefited every-one involved (the property owner, VA Syd and the municipality), but it is also difficult to put a mon-etary value on.
The complexity of attempts to estimate the costs and benefits of an open stormwater system is apparent. Long-term costs are often unknown. It is difficult to put a monetary value on the benefits.
In addition, costs and benefits often do not always impact the same people or organisations.
1 91% of the residents of Augustenborg say they believe the design of the gardens and local environment are fairly or very good, compared to 87% on average among MKB’s clients. 86% of the residents in Augustenborg say that access to benches and tables is fairly or very good, compared to 80% across MKB’s clients.
87% of the residents in Augustenborg say that choice of flowers, bushes and trees is fairly or very good compared to 83% across MKB’s residents.