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“From the beginning, water has been an important piece of NALT’s concerns. That started with Project 2000 and the Stream Team more than two decades ago. These initiatives covered 17 creeks in the Nanaimo area,” stated Paul Chapman. “As recently as the mid-1990s, the connection had still not been made by the community between storm drains and the creekshed. We all live in a creekshed, and we need to think about that. Project 2000 was about community engagement, empowerment and activation.”

“Shifts in environmental partnerships have been occurring within the City Parks system. The City has adapted to try and make environmental stewardship a more inclusive activity for residents in order to build connections between residents and natural spaces,” stated Rob Lawrance. “PIP, the Partners in Parks Program, provides an opportunity to get people outside and involved, and it often brings neighbours who may not have even met before to work together to improve their community.”

“There is a high demand for baseline data on wetland systems. Data on the locations of wetlands within urbanized, agricultural, and developed areas, as well as the classification of wetland sites is typically unavailable or limited,” stated Ashley Van Acken. “Understanding the dynamic and complex relationship between wetlands, surface water, and aquifer systems will increase freshwater sustainability in the region.”

Dave Clough talked about training and supporting legions of volunteer stream stewards – what works and what doesn’t for long lasting watershed engagement. “As a professional biologist, that is my career. But my heart is a streamkeeper. And I was that first. Howard English, down at Goldstream, taught me that the value of caring for the environment could come from anyone, from any walk of life. He was a barber. Streamkeepers are the engine that are going to make this (restorative development) work.”

“Despite more than a century of development in the surrounding lands, the K’omoks Estuary is second only to the Fraser River Estuary in supporting the highest concentrations of migratory birds in BC’s part of the Pacific Flyway. And it remains in the top five of only eight Class 1 estuaries in BC. However, Project Watershed’s most recent Vision and Guiding Principles for the Estuary is brutally honest: ‘unless we do something quickly to turn things around, we will lose this precious feature of the Comox Valley community’,” wrote Tim Ennis.

“Our program is called Drinking Water and Watershed Protection on purpose. Yes, it’s a long name but it captures the related elements of water that we work on in terms of education, science and policy,” emphasized Julie Pisani. “To get to restorative development, we need to restore (or establish) healthy working partnerships. These partnerships will provide the foundation for implementing and maintaining a more sustainable and restorative way of developing our land base, centered on water protection.”

“By providing a value for the land underlying the stream and riparian zone, stakeholders have a much more realistic idea of the worth of the ecological services supplied by environmental assets,” stated Tim Pringle. “This form of financial information can be used for asset management strategies related to ‘Asset Management for Sustainable Service Delivery: A BC Framework’. This guidance document sets a strategic direction that refocuses local government business processes on outcomes that reduce life-cycle costs and risks.”

“Our goal in carrying out the research was that the findings would be reflective of local government experience. Of course, we understood that experience differs based on the organization, but we also recognized that it is really empirically grounded and speaks to certain trends or tendencies – in other words, it might not be everyone’s experience, but it is experienced by some,” stated Christine Mettler. “This research was informed by a few different components, principally an online survey supplemented by interviews.”

“You have only started; and in so doing, you can move outside the limitations of formal, established governance structures,” stated Bob Sandford. “It is the way to move out from under that, to build new governance pathways. And pathways to real power that can allow you to make change possible in a much shorter period of time. You have proven that, if you change your attitudes, changes in practice follow almost immediately. So, I ask and urge you to carry on. Don’t just be satisfied with slowing and reversing past damage. Keep working to make your world better.”

“The movies are out! Videos taken at the symposium are now posted on YouTube,” announced John Finnie. “While we are not looking for an Oscar, we must say that the quality of video production is outstanding. Our videographer, Gary Prendergast, has done a fabulous job of blending audio with PowerPoint slides. The extra effort to record the day has resulted in a legacy resource that will give life to the Symposium as a ‘watershed moment’.”