ASSET MANAGEMENT BC NEWSLETTER (September 2016) – Announcement: Partnership for Water Sustainability publishes Primer to support vision for “Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management”
Note to Reader:
Asset Management BC and the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia have aligned efforts to advance their shared vision for sustainable service delivery. The September 2016 issue of the Asset Management BC Newsletter included an article by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC.
The article was published in parallel with release of Sustainable Watershed Systems: Primer on Application of Ecosystem-based Understanding in the Georgia Basin. The venue for release was the Annual General Meeting of the Mid Vancouver Island Habitat Enhancement Society.
This guidance document, the 6th in the Beyond the Guidebook Primer Series, is written in a magazine-style to help multiple audiences – whether elected, administrative, technical or stewardship – ask the right questions and ensure that “science-based understanding” is applied properly and effectively to implement land development practices that restore the water balance (hydrologic integrity) of watersheds.
A watershed is an integrated system. The need to protect headwater streams and groundwater resources in BC requires that communities expand their view from one that looks at a site in isolation to one that considers all sites, the watershed landscape, streams and foreshores, groundwater aquifers, and so on, as an integrated system.
Whole Systems Approach
BC has a provincial policy, program and regulatory framework that enables local governments to move from UNDERSTANDING to IMPLEMENTATION of a “whole systems” approach keyed to the primacy of hydrology.
The new Water Sustainability Act (“the Act”) plus Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A Framework for BC are lynch-pins for looking at water and watersheds differently.
The Act connects land and water, and makes the link to desired water balance outcomes.
The BC Framework is a powerful tool for local governments to focus their community planning and infrastructure decision processes on beneficial life-cycle outcomes.
Ask the Right Questions
Local governments are starting to recognize that natural assets have value, ecosystem services have a role in municipal service delivery, and so need to be integrated into their asset management programs.
Restoring hydrologic integrity, and thus the water balance, is key to achieving a water-resilient future in urban areas. A key message in the Primer is the necessity of “staying true to the science”.
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