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“For the Bowker Creek watershed, we realized that the community, especially the youth, had no memory of Bowker Creek in a natural state because almost 70% of the creek was in pipes,” recalls Jody Watson. “When developing the Bowker Blueprint, we used stylized graphics to represent an open and above-ground creek and to depict many of the design with nature concepts that the Blueprint contemplates for the watershed. We did this to help the community visualize what is possible.”

“Beyond the Guidebook 2015 introduces Dr. Daniel Pauly’s Shifting Baseline Syndrome to explain why communities unwittingly accept incremental and cumulative environmental degradation. It then adapts this thinking to focus on how communities can turn the clock back to replicate desired conditions. This outcome would be achievable through an approach that is being branded as Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management,” explains Kim Stephens.

“This is superlative work. It records so much in visual and conversational ways that everyone who reads it will see how changes are informed and guided towards collaborative action to achieve real results. You have connected the dots enabling those who were part of the stories to see how they have contributed in so many meaningful ways for themselves and their communities of place and practice,” stated Erik Karlsen.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome refers to a gradual change in the accepted norm for ecological conditions. “Every generation will use the images that they got at the beginning of their conscious lives as a standard and will extrapolate forward. And the difference then, they perceive as a loss. But they don’t perceive what happened before as a loss. You can have a succession of changes. At the end you want to sustain miserable leftovers. And the question is, why do people accept this?,” stated Daniel Pauly.

In BC, a ‘learn-by-doing’ process is opening minds and building confidence that communities can re-set the ecological baseline and can replicate a desired watershed condition. According to Kim Stephens: “The Guidebook vision is that community development activities and further alteration of the Built Environment will result in cumulative benefits, not impacts. In 2002, the Guidebook identified a path forward for local governments.”

The pioneer work of Richard Horner and Chris May provided a reason and a starting point for revisiting urban hydrology in BC.“So many studies manipulate a single variable out of context with the whole and its many additional variables,” states Horner, an adjunct professor at the University of Washington. “We, on the other hand, investigated whole systems in place, tying together measures of the landscape, stream habitat and aquatic life.”

“All uses of rainfall instead of flow data make the ‘Big Assumption’,” states Andy Reese. “This is a problem, because there are an infinite number of combinations of all the variables within the watershed we have to estimate to try to arrive at that one peak flow. So we must make simplifying assumptions about everything that affects stormwater volume and that moderates its flow rate.”

“The Stormwater Guidebook for British Columbia, published in 2002, offers direction and guidance on how to do stormwater management planning, design principles, and objectives,” wrote Jim Dumont. “We must be driven to investigate the problems and issues that stimulated preparation of the Guidebook. In doing so, we will be able to advance the science and engineering practice in a manner intended by the Guidebook.”