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“Over the past year, we have begun to frame where we want to get to in British Columbia in terms of sustainable watershed systems. We are saying it is a three-step process, If you don’t already have an asset management plan, then you cannot make that leap all the way to Step Three,” stated Kim Stephens. “What the Partnership is trying to do right now is to get them ready in terms of where they need to be a couple of years down the road.”

“No longer is asset management only about hard engineered assets,” stated Kim Stephens. “Already facing a $200 billion challenge for renewal of hard infrastructure, ‘Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework’ provides a financial driver for local governments to integrate watershed systems thinking and climate adaptation into asset management.”

“The Ecological Accounting Protocol is the lynch-pin for Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management,” stated Kim Stephens. “The three pathways by which rainfall reaches streams are ‘infrastructure assets’. The pathways provide ‘water balance services’. With this frame of reference, local governments would then use the Ecological Accounting Protocol to develop a more complete financial picture.”

“Part of great municipal leadership today is also understanding the importance and urgency of smart asset management. If leaders are not focused on the protection, development and renewal of their municipal assets then their community becomes more vulnerable—and so does the next generation of residents and taxpayers,” wrote Gord Hume. “Leadership. Great leadership. Strong leadership. Canada’s municipalities need it, want it and deserve it.”

“The BC Framework is a powerful tool for local governments to focus community planning and infrastructure decision-making processes on beneficial life-cycle outcomes right from the start,”stated Brian Bedford. “It encourages local governments to protect, preserve, restore, and manage their natural assets in the same way they manage their hard engineered assets.”

The goal of ‘Sustainable Watershed Systems, through Asset Management’ is to forestall an unfunded taxpayer liability flowing from ‘changes in hydrology’. This means protect and manage the water balance of a watershed in the same way that engineered assets and the services they provide are managed. The foundation for this paradigm-shift was laid in the 1990s when Bill Derry (photo left) and Kim Stephens led a workshop program for BC municipalities.

The Clean Water and Wastewater Fund is a program that supports long term benefits in the rehabilitation of water, wastewater and stormwater systems, and for the planning and design of future facilities and upgrades to existing. “Water and wastewater infrastructure is essential to keeping waterways clean and communities healthy. This funding will support local governments in creating essential public infrastructure that future generations will depend on,” stated Premier Christy Clark.

“Many of the services that we deliver to the citizens of Gibsons are directly or indirectly delivered by nature,” Machado told members of the CRD finance committee. “At the heart of the Gibsons Eco-Asset Strategy is North America’s first natural asset policy, which directs the municipality to consider the role of natural assets within our overall asset management strategy. The innovation in this strategy is that it helps to explain the value of natural assets in terms of financial and management strategies.”

“As co-chair of Asset Management BC, I have seen first-hand how proper asset management principles have benefitted communities around the world,” wrote David Allen. “Increasingly, the benefits provided by nature are being recognized and incorporated into the delivery of local government services. Unlike the built environment, healthy ecological services are self-sustaining, and don’t require expensive operations and maintenance costs.”

“Whether it is our bodies or our infrastructure, we may be tempted to resent, ignore or argue with the slow inexorable tide of aging but that is not leadership. Leadership is having the courage to face reality,” wrote Christina Benty. “The asset management process provides the information for local government to develop a strategy that considers realistic life-cycle projections, replacement costs, and risk analysis to allow for long term organization-wide planning.”