Water-Centric Planning

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Everyone in a local government organization needs to recognize that asset management is a process, not a plan,” stated Wally Wells, Asset Management BC Executive Director, when explaining application of BC’s Framework for Sustainable Service Delivery (May 2021)


    “The important and telling part of the title is Asset Management is a process to provide a sound basis for decisions relating to the function – which is service delivery! Assets exist and are created, upgraded, replaced, maintained, and operated to provide a service. There is no other reason for their existence than provision of the intended service. So, when considering a project related to an asset, we should be considering the service the asset is to provide. An Australian associate once said: ‘an asset without a user has no value’,” stated Wally Wells.

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    CREATING SAFE CITIES FOR SALMON: “Using the Salmon-Safe Urban eco-certification as an evaluative framework for policy comparison, the study showcases the many efforts being made across the Lower Fraser region to develop cities more sustainably with wild salmon populations in mind,” reported Andrea McDonald, author of the joint research study by the Pacific Water Research Centre and the Salmon-Safe BC team (May 2021)


    “Protection of salmon and their habitat from the adverse impacts of urban development is a challenging task that requires an all-of-government response. Findings from this research highlight the variable involvement and guidance provided from the higher levels of government in Canada. As one expert noted, the province must provide more clarity on direct regulatory obligations which have compliance initiatives in place to enforce them. Inadequate statutory foundations and enforcement of current regulations have only hindered the implementation of nature-based solutions to protect salmon in cities,” stated Andrea McDonald.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “The lack of communication between different government agencies and between governments and stewardship groups is concerning,” stated Nikki Kroetsch, DFO’s Community Engagement Coordinator with the Pacific Science Enterprise Centre in West Vancouver, when she explained why the current state of environmental monitoring in BC communities is a call to action (May 2021)


    “The Pacific Science Enterprise Centre, known as PSEC, as a whole is addressing the ‘lack of collaboration’ issue quite simply by embracing and facilitating collaboration, but in my role as Community Engagement Coordinator I’ve also been specifically attempting to address the lack of communication regarding environmental monitoring; albeit slowly and methodically, as I’m only one person! Specifically I’m doing this through the PSEC Community Stream Monitoring project, which we call CoSMo for short,” stated Nikki Kroetsch.

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    THE EMERGING CRISIS AROUND GROUNDWATER LEGISLATION IMPLEMENTATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “All water users in BC need to know that the government takes unauthorized water use seriously. Enforcing the law will send a powerful message to historic groundwater users that if they fail to get in the queue by March of next year, there will be consequences,” said Ben Parfitt, resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Pollution Alternatives (May 2021)


    If historic, non-domestic water users don’t get their licence applications in by March 1 2022, they’ll not only lose their authority to use the water, but they could experience a gap of years before a decision is made on their applications. “It is entirely possible that after the deadline ranchers or farmers who had used water from their wells for a century but failed to meet the licence deadline could find themselves competing for the same resource alongside new bottled water companies. That’s a minefield the government does not want to step into,” stated Ben Parfitt.

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    DOING SCIENCE DIFFERENTLY IN LOCAL CREEKSHEDS: “Stewardship groups are such an underutilized resource right now. My Masters research looked at how governments can better collaborate with stream stewardship groups on environmental monitoring initiatives,” stated DFO’s Nikki Kroetsch, Community Engagement Coordinator with the Pacific Science Enterprise Centre in West Vancouver


    “According to the federal, provincial, and local government employees and the stewardship group volunteers I interviewed for my Masters research, data collection is currently siloed and unorganized. Many people are collecting essentially the same data, but because there’s very little communication and data sharing going on between them, it means a lot of duplicated efforts, which is a huge waste of resources given that monitoring is often time consuming and expensive to conduct,” stated Nikki Kroetsch.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Given the variability of the factors behind ‘Water Out = Water In’, this relationship always will represent a snap-shot in time as its’ inputs shift, evolve and change over time,” stated Robert Hicks, Senior Engineer with the Metro Vancouver Regional District, when reflecting on how to deal with uncertainty and manage risk (March 2021)


    “A constant challenge for planning is not to prevent past events, but instead is to use past experiences to inform and create flexible strategies for the present and the future. This need for flexibility is not restricted to the immediate scope of the problem at hand; but must also consider the broader juggling of evolving local government priorities and service demands. This leads to the challenge of assessing problems with sufficient complexity to arrive at flexible and resilient solutions, while at the same time not being overwhelmed and paralyzed by over-analysis,” stated Robert Hicks.

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    LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “The responsibility for water needs to reside in one ministry with the mandate to require other ministries to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, and collaborate. In our system of government, accountability flows through the minister,” stated Mike Wei, former Deputy Comptroller of Water Rights, when commenting on implementation challenges around groundwater licensing (April 2021)


    “Licensing the 20,000 groundwater users who predate the 2016 legislation is a massive task but the other side of the coin is ensuring proper compliance by new groundwater users who have drilled wells since 2016. By both motivating historical groundwater users to apply for their licences and signalling that government will deal with unauthorized water users, Government could go a long way to restoring public confidence and realizing the transformative goals of the Water Sustainability Act,” stated Mike Wei.

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    FINANCIAL VALUATION OF ECOLOGICAL SERVICES AND WORTH: “As a result of alterations to the hydrology of the creekshed, the Shelly Creek ‘riparian ecosystem’ has been reduced to a number of ‘riparian zones’ as defined in regulations. We view this finding as one of the key takeaways from the Shelly Creek demonstration application of the Ecological Accounting Process,” stated Tim Chair, EAP Chair


    “The Ecological Accounting Process (EAP) considers use and conservation of land to be equally important values. Historically, land use and property development in our communities have been given priority over ecological systems such as streams. Too often the result has been remnant ecological services that fall far short of the benefits that these natural commons can provide. The research findings suggest that the diminution of stream functions gradually will draw the attention of property owners and the community to the ‘no harm’ rule in land appraisal.,” stated Tim Pringle.

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