6 – LESSONS FROM THE PAST INFORM THE FUTURE IN METRO VANCOUVER: What happened in the 2010s?
Note to Reader:
In November 2024, the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia released THE SYNOPSIS for the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation in Metro Vancouver. The Chronicle is a sweeping narrative of the 30-year period from 1994 through 2024. The Chronicle is a layered package comprising four documents: the Chronicle of the Journey, Stories Within the Story, Synopsis and Executive Summary. The target audience for each layer is different.
The Synopsis is the third layer in the cascade. It is oriented to senior managers who have limited time to absorb what they need to know to make informed decisions. The Synopsis is visual and so can easily be skimmed in 20 minutes or less! This extract is from page S7.
What went wrong with the stream systems component after the Minister of Environment approved the LWMP in 2011?
“When Environment Minister Terry Lake approved the region’s second LWMP in 2011, Condition #9 aligned with expectations explicit in the vison for Sustainable Watershed Systems through Asset Management,” wrote Kim Stephens, Synopsis author and Partnership Executive Director.
“Failure to follow through and build on work done up to 2011 to deal with these requirements is an unintended outcome of a major change in direction in 2012. That is the year responsibility for SILG was reassigned to a different group at Metro Vancouver.”
“Different players, different history, and different interests in terms of technical backgrounds. The staff that managed SILG were never part of the lived experience up to 2011.”
Land development pressures push local governments to pay lip-service to the role of the streamside protection zone
“Failure to follow through reflected scant understanding of a stream system context, the value of water balance pathways, the condition of native vegetation and woodlands cover, and the need for restoration.”
“The growing cost due to neglect of the Drainage Service, combined with the urgency of the drainage liability issue, is the driver in the 2020s for linking municipal infrastructure asset management and stream health as cause-and-effect.”
“Looking ahead, the challenge for local governments is to move from stopgap fixes for immediate problems to long-term solutions for effective maintenance and management (M&M) of streams.”
To Learn More:
Download a copy of the Synopsis of the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation in Metro Vancouver from 1994 through 2024. released in November 2024. The Synopsis is structured as six sections.
DOWNLOAD A COPY: https://waterbucket.ca/gi/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/11/Metro-Van-Chronicle_Synopsis_DRAFT_Nov2024.pdf