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“Incorporation of the Partnership for Water Sustainability as a non-profit society allows us to carry on the Living Water Smart mission. We are growing a network, not building an organization. In terms of my professional career as a water resource engineer and planner, I have been in the right place at the right time, and with the right people. In a nutshell, my responsibilities revolve around delivering the Water Sustainability Action Plan through partnerships and collaboration, through a local government network,” stated Kim Stephens.

“The Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative (IREI) is the Partnership’s flagship program. Five regional districts are IREI partners: Metro Vancouver, Capital, Nanaimo, Cowichan Valley and Comox Valley. Combined, they represent 75% of BC’s population. The Partnership’s mandate is to provide value through collaboration and partnerships. The IREI provides local governments with a mechanism to collaborate, share outcomes and cross-pollinate experience with each other,” stated Kim Stephens.

In June 2019, the newly created Intengine Global Change Foundation will host hundreds of young sustainability leaders and established industry-wide professionals, for the first annual Sustainability Leadership Congress. “The Partnership is participating in the Congress because the Intengine Foundation’s vision for intergenerational capacity-building aligns with the commitment by the Partnership to identify and mentor emerging talent in the local government setting,” stated Kim Stephens.

“We are convinced that community empowerment and sustainable partnerships with local government are key to adapting to the ‘new normal’ – and that is, warmer and wetter winters, longer and drier summers,” stated Kim Stephens. “A decade of effort, by partnerships of local governments and community stewards, is demonstrating success on the ground where it matters. They are on a pathway to reconnect hydrology and ecology.”

“Now that the Societies Act has provided the Partnership with clarity regarding our identify, it allows the Board of Directors to focus on the Partnership mission – which is to serve as the hub for a ‘convening for action’ network in the local government setting, and to deliver the Water Sustainability Action Plan for British Columbia through partnerships and collaboration,” wrote Kim Stephens. “The Partnership is funded exclusively by government and provides services to government.”

Kim Stephens said the water issue is gaining a prominence in the public’s mind which it has never had. “People in general have not appreciated how vulnerable we’ve always been. They’re beginning to see how essential it is,” he said. Stephens advises the public to stay positive and not succumb to a negative state of mind. “Drought is not the end of the world. Australia survived a seven-year drought. People get through it,” he said. “The clock is ticking. Communities need to leverage this teachable year and seize opportunities to change how the water resource is viewed and managed,”

“In British Columbia, we don’t prescribe. We encourage shared responsibility. Prescribing just doesn’t seem to work. We seem to have to get to a critical mass where people realize that we have to do something,” stated Kim Stephens. “The last ‘teachable year’ was 2003. That set in motion a process that culminated with the adoption in 2014 of the Water Sustainability Act.”

“The ‘new normal’ in British Columbia is drought and flooding. The summer dry season has extended on both ends and communities can no longer count on a predictable snowpack and reliable rain to maintain a healthy water balance in their watersheds. This is putting water supply systems and ecosystems under extreme stress,” says Kim Stephens. “What you do on the land or how you treat the land has direct implications and consequences for water use.”

“In other regions, notably California, they think of droughts in terms of number of years. In the Georgia Basin (Southwest BC), we measure droughts in terms of number of months. As we have increasingly experienced in recent decades, three months versus either four or five months of essentially rain-free weather makes a material difference from a water supply perspective,” stated Kim Stephens.

“This past summer, local government water managers throughout Southwest BC were telling me that watershed conditions were so dry that there was simply no inflow to water storage reservoirs as the drought progressed. There were a lot of worried folks by late July when there was no end in sight to the drought and it appeared that we were about to experience an unprecedented 6-month period with almost no rain. There is no Plan B once the reservoirs are empty. The clock is ticking. Communities need to leverage this teachable year and seize opportunities to change how the water resource is viewed and managed,” emphasized Kim Stephens.