AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE GROUNDS NATURAL ASSET MANAGEMENT: “Our focus in moving forward with EAP, the Ecological Accounting Process, is on land that we own,” stated Murray Walters, Manager of Water Services with the Regional District of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island

 

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The edition published on October 22, 2024 is the second installment in a 4-part series that showcases a successful precedent to pass the intergenerational baton and build long-term capacity within local government to implement Natural Asset Management. Anna Lawrence, project coordinator for the EAP Transition Strategy Partnership is the guest editor for a conversation with Murray Walters, Manager of Water Services, about the Regional District of Nanaimo’s experience in advancing EAP.

 

An engineering perspective grounds Natural Asset Management

This edition is the second installment in a 4-part series that celebrates a unique partnership, one that is powering a pragmatic path forward for Natural Asset Management within the local government setting.

 

 

Supported financially by UBCM, three Vancouver Island local governments are founding members of the EAP Partnership which also includes the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Region Research Institute (MABRRI), Vancouver Island University and the Partnership for Water Sustainability.

The vision is that the partnership will evolve into an EAP centre-of-excellence at VIU. In 2022, the partners committed to a 3-year transition strategy to embed EAP in MABRRI by doing three EAP projects each per year.

 

Watershed protection context

“The Regional District of Nanaimo is all-in with our participation,” explains Murray Walters. “We see EAP as a closely aligned  initiative with the things that we promised to do in the 10-year work plan for the region’s Drinking Water & Watershed Protection Program. If not for the DWWP, in fact, that linkage would have been less likely to have happened in the first place.”

“As an organization, we need to get wiser about natural asset management. We need to be able to open people’s eyes about natural asset management in general and as an element of municipal infrastructure services.”

“We also need to open eyes more so to the financial side of what these natural assets contribute. And vice versa. How much financial aid we need to put into these assets to allow them to do that.”

 

 

GUEST EDITOR PERSPECTIVE / CONTEXT FOR BUSY READER

“The Regional District of Nanaimo had an early interest in EAP. So much so, the Millstone River was one of five Stage 3 projects in the 6-year program of applied research that tested, refined and mainstreamed the EAP methodology and metrics,” states Anna Lawrence of the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Region Research Institute (MABRRI) at Vancouver Island University. Anna is the Project Coordinator for the EAP Transition Strategy Partnership.

“During that 6-year period, the Partnership for Water Sustainability relied on MABRRI staff and VIU students to do data analysis and GIS work. Now, with the EAP Transition Strategy Partnership, MABRRI is the program lead and the Partnership for Water Sustainability has an oversight and mentoring role.”

 

With French Creek, the RDN will take its Millstone River experience to another level

“The RDN selected French Creek as its first project under the EAP Partnership umbrella because it will feed into the needs analysis for the ongoing provincially community issues study in the French Creek electoral area. EAP is especially relevant to a drainage and riparian corridor protection strategy.”

 

 

“In Year One of the 3-year transition, we were learning the EAP methodology. When we began Year Two, the plan was to gather community member input and develop a research question to explore in Year Two…which is what we have done.”

“EAP has seven steps. So, in Year One we focused on the first three to start out because they are basic for any EAP analysis. In Year Two, we are building on this base of information and data that we now have for French Creek.”

 

 

Overview of the two-year program to date

“Tim Pringle explains EAP in these terms: EAP recognizes steams as ecological systems providing drainage, services for intrinsic nature, recreation, and enjoyment of property uses. A stream is a natural asset. A stream is a Natural Commons and a Social Commons. A stream is a land use.

 

Context for implementing natural asset management

Local governments apply regulation, planning, zoning and taxation based on parcels. EAP methodology aggregates and analyzes information based on parcels and uses only the assessed values of parcels for financial analysis.

Asset Management Plans need a financial value in order to include budgets for stream maintenance and management (M&M). In our Year One report, we presented the Natural Commons Asset (NCA) financial value and the M&M budgets for the entirety of the creek, as well as for individual land use categories.

Year Two Program:

We have since progressed into Year Two. Over the summer, we held an engagement session with community members, including representatives from Friends of French Creek Conservation Society, Hamilton Wetlands and Forest Preservation Society, Mosaic Forest Management, and the RDN.

The intention of this meeting was to talk about previous expenditures that had gone into French Creek over the past 10 years and  to identify, on a map, future sites for conservation and restoration.

 

The calculations for the sites within RDN jurisdiction will be the most significant. And hopefully that information will be useful to RDN to push things forward and prove to other local governments as to how Natural Asset Management can be advanced and utilized.

Illustration of spatial parameters for calculation of the NCA financial value 

The NCA value is the Inner Stream Setback Zone. Because it is defined in regulation, the NCA is a Land Use in urban and rural areas where there is land development. If the stream did not exist, the land occupied by the stream corridor would be used for residential or other development.

 

 

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: Reflections on the 3-year transition strategy for embedding EAP at Vancouver Island University – extracts from a conversation with Murray Walters about the Regional District of Nanaimo experience 

At the midway mark in the 3-year transition strategy for embedding EAP at Vancouver Island University, Anna Lawrence and Murray Walters had a conversation to take stock of the journey. A set of four questions provided a framework for reflections by Murray Walters.

Why is the Regional District of Nanaimo all-in with its 3-year commitment to the EAP Partnership? Midway through, how does Murray Walters describe his view of the journey to date?

 

THREAD ONE: Why the RDN is all-in with its commitment to the EAP Partnership

“The RDN is all-in for three reasons,” stated Murray Walters. “Obviously our Drinking Water and Watershed Protection Program is really interested in initiatives like EAP as it pertains to watershed protection. That is the first link.”

“Secondly, beyond that is how the EAP initiative relates to MABRRI and Vancouver Island University. Anytime within the context of the DWWP program that we have an opportunity to help promote moving something like this from a volunteer group into an academic world is a good thing. And doing this also supports the goals of DWWP.”

“So, not only is it what the Partnership and MABRRI are trying to do, the way you are doing it is a good fit. Then EAP can be seen and developed by a lot more people…and potentially get more profile.”

 

 

“The third reason is that we really are in the early days of trying to understand what Natural Asset Management looks like. We learned a whole bunch from the Millstone River EAP study that was a joint effort with the City of Nanaimo in 2020.”

“The EAP project opened our eyes to how much money is being spent on the Millstone system, particularly within the city and less so in the RDN reaches.”

 

 

A way forward is starting to crystallize

“As an organization we are moving forward with trying to identify where we have natural assets that provide…shall we say infrastructure service. That is what DWWP and the Long Range Planning folks have agreed to do through a collaborative approach.”

“We will identify a few areas where we could potentially do something on land we own, most likely in a park. We are going to try and establish what the contribution is…as an asset. Then we can connect the dots to the financial requirements for managing that asset.”

 

THREAD TWO:  Why the RDN selected French Creek as its 2nd EAP project

“The RDN has completed a natural assets inventory which identifies where we think all the natural assets are within the region. But we have not identified which of them have a definable service.”

“What we are hoping with French Creek is that we can identify some of those peripheral areas within French Creek, generate some M&M figures, and merge the inventory and asset management approaches. A measure of convergence is when you have a real number that you can use for pragmatic planning.”

 

 

“Mosaic owns it. And we cannot ask Mosaic to do this or that because their mandate is not to provide infrastructure services for the public good. Their mandate is to make money off forestry. This example illustrates some of the challenges that we face.”

Governance in an electoral area of a regional district

“Another good reason why we chose French Creek is to shine another light on some of the difficulties surrounding governance in electoral areas outside the municipal boundaries.”

 

 

“French Creek is such a mess because there are large unincorporated areas of development and private ownership in the middle and upper watershed that converge on the very densely populated Oceanside. Road drainage is a major contributor to problems that are being experienced.”

“Governance is not the primary goal of the EAP study. But when you look at what we are going to get with EAP…and consider how it fits into the ongoing governance studies that are happening in that electoral area…well, I anticipate it is going to be a really helpful piece of information.”

THREAD THREE: How the RDN will use what they have learned from French Creek

“Natural asset management is in its infancy. SO WE ARE REALLY FOCUSING ON LAND THAT WE OWN. You look at something like Hamilton Marsh and it is very visible and it is very obvious that it provides a service. But we lack the ability to influence what goes on there.”

 

 

“As an organization we need to focus on land that we own to prove the concept more than anything. Maybe there is an element of timing in there where we can identify an asset that we do own…and that will allow the natural asset inventory and asset management to come together a little bit better.”

“If we can do something on our land to prove the concept, get it accepted by our board of directors, then maybe that is the trigger to try and influence other people who also have land to behave in a similar fashion. That is the direction where I see natural asset management going.”

The DWWP function made it possible to advance EAP

“The fact that we have the DWWP function here at the RDN is what allows us to participate so wholesomely in this kind of innovative partnership with other organizations and move the whole idea of Natural Asset Management forward.”

“It is really a function of having a group of funded, enthusiastic, creative thinking people who can see where this is going in the long term. A couple of years ago, when we were doing the Millstone EAP project, it was a bit of a hobby and we were not quite sure what we were going to use it for. Well, it is four years later and we are significantly advanced from those early days.”

 

Collaboration leverages science to inform policy

“To move away from the science, data and community outreach stuff…and into policy and planning…the two groups have to work really closely together. Many of the long-range planning initiatives refer to partnerships with DWMP and moving our collaboration forward.”

 

 

“You have to de-silo. You cannot operate in silos where everyone is trying to grab more turf all the time. You need to operate in an environment where people are not afraid to go talk and tell you what they are doing and what they want to help with.”

“We cannot always help them and they cannot always help us either. But we are talking about it these days. Internal collaboration does not happen overnight. You must have initial successes to build relationships. That is what the French Creek EAP project represents. It will feed into other studies,” concludes Murray Walters.

 

 

Living Water Smart in British Columbia Series

To download a copy of the foregoing resource as a PDF document for your records and/or sharing, click on Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Reflections on the 3-year transition strategy for embedding EAP at Vancouver Island University – Regional District of Nanaimo experience.

DOWNLOAD A COPY: https://waterbucket.ca/wcp/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/10/PWSBC_Living-Water-Smart_Murray-Walters-reflections-on-EAP-Partnership_2024.pdf

 

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