LANDSCAPES AND WATERSHEDS IN BC ARE AT A HEIGHTENED RISK: “Relying solely on engineering solutions will never be adequate for managing flood risk,” stated Younes Alila, professional engineer and professor in the UBC Faculty of Forestry who is raising the alarm about scientifically indefensible practices in forest hydrology
Younes Alila is in the news. He is courageous in challenging conventional wisdom about what he believes to be the misguided practice of forest hydrology in BC. His message boils down to RISK and LIABILITY. “Engineering solutions to flood risk mitigation deal only with symptoms. And they fail to account for cumulative effects. The outcome is unintended consequences,” he says. “Flood mitigation work in the low land must be in sync with our land use and forest cover policies in the uplands. This is our only hope of increasing our chance of managing flood risk.” His findings are relevant to urban drainage practice.