Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC

INCREASED FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE, DURATION AND LIABILITY OF FLOODS: “Politics prevents you from doing the right thing. And politicians ignore what they do not understand. This results in risks and liabilities. That’s my concern.” – Mike Morris, former BC Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General

October 21, 2025 - Posted in water sustainability

Note to Reader:

Published by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia, Waterbucket eNews celebrates the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. Storylines accommodate a range of reader attention spans. Read the headline and move on, or take the time to delve deeper – it is your choice!

Downloadable versions are available at Living Water Smart in British Columbia: The Series. Stories are structured in three parts: One-Minute Takeaway, Editor’s Perspective, and the Story Behind the Story.

The edition published on October 21, 2025 is about profiles in courage. It featured two individuals: former BC cabinet minister Mike Morris; and University of BC professor Dr. Younes Alila. The story behind the story is about how they have aligned efforts to build awareness of Dr. Alila’s Flood Risk Methodology for flood protection. Their compelling message is that removal of forest cover, whether in rural or urban watersheds, increases the frequency, magnitude, duration and liability of floods.

ONE MINUTE TAKEAWAY for the extremely busy reader

Trouble in the Headwaters

The gripping 25-minute documentary titled Trouble in the Headwaters profiles decades long research by Dr. Younes Alila of UBC Forestry.

In parallel with the documentary, the University of BC issued a news release in July 2025 titled Clear-cutting linked to 18-fold rise in extreme floods.

HOT OFF THE PRESS! Frontiers in Environmental Science, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal just made Younes Alila’s framework available to flood managers and communities worldwide.

Images are mostly from the Partnership’s library. Some are from the public domain and Creative Commons.

EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE / CONTEXT FOR BUSY READER

“The third installment in the Green Infrastructure Chronicle series tells the story of innovation between 1997 and 2005. At the same time, Younes Alila started down a parallel path when he joined the UBC Forestry faculty. His career began several years earlier at the Greater Vancouver Regional District where he did urban drainage modelling,” stated Kim Stephens, Waterbucket eNews Editor and Partnership Executive Director.

“Three decades later, the two paths are merging. With this edition, we foreshadow the companion Chronicle of Urban Water Balance Innovation, which the Partnership will release in 2026.”

“We chronicle the history of urban hydrology innovation through a whole-system, water balance lens. Holistic describes a way of thinking that considers the parts as being inseparable from the whole, and not existing independently.”

Look at watersheds as systems. Know your hydrology, prevent floods and habitat loss

“The story behind the story is about Younes Alila’s Flood Risk Methodology for flood protection. A complementary methodology is Jim Dumont’s Stream Health Methodology for habitat protection. Together they support holistic thinking that views watersheds as systems, understands how water reaches streams, and manages them as systems.”

“Both are founded on the probabilistic framework to understanding and predicting hydrology. The Flood Risk Methodology is about peak flow frequency analysis while the Stream Health Methodology is about low flow duration analysis.”

Four quotable quotes provide context and perspective

“Can we afford to continue on the same path when the stakes are high? We cannot manage the risk of hydrologic extremes without the right understanding of the probabilistic response.”

“There is a need for a new approach to hydrologic design, Jim Dumont advocated in the mid-2000s. So, Fergus Creek in Surrey became the pilot for a runoff-based approach because duration of discharge links directly to stream health.”

“Engineers routinely extrapolate way, way beyond the limits of the data and then argue fiercely about which curve fitting technique is most accurate.”

“Everybody wants to repeat things. Or they ignore things because all the reports and all the findings are covered in dust. Or they are lost in some server that got unplugged 20 years ago when they upgraded the server.”

An urban watershed perspective

The technical foundation and starting point for restoring water balance and reducing risk and liability in human settlement areas is Stormwater Planning: A Guidebook for British Columbia, released by the Province in 2002.

North American context for BC innovation

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: Increased frequency, magnitude, duration and LIABILITY of floods – conversations with Mike Morris and Younes Alila

The story behind the story is structured in two parts, with 4 topics in each part.

In Part One, Mike Morris shares his experience related to risks and liabilities. He brings three perspectives to the topic: RCMP commanding officer; elected member of the legislative assembly and cabinet minister; informed member of the community writ large. He concludes with optimism about what can be if there is a political will.

In Part Two, Younes Alila elaborates on his belief that science without passion is not science. He is in the news a lot because he is raising the alarm. Just like Mike Morris, his message boils down to RISK AND LIABILITY. The actual consequences of stripping the landscape of trees, he warns, are magnified in this era of weather extremes.

PART ONE: What motivates Mike Morris? His experience with risks and liabilities!

Mike Morris is a former cabinet minister. That sets him apart from someone who just has an opinion about Younes Alila. So, I began our conversation by asking what is the story behind the story of how he became a passionate fan and ally of Younes.

TOPIC 1: Perspective as a district commander in the RCMP

TOPIC 2: Perspective as an elected member of the British Columbia legislative assembly

“I was solicitor general and minister of public safety from 2015 through 2017, a period of droughts and fires. Flooding was also an issue. And I worked closely with the emergency centres across the province to make sure they had the right systems in place and that all the agencies were working together.”

“In 2018, I happened to read a Forest Practices Board report which quoted a paper by Dr. Younes Alila. So I started reading more of his work. And, I thought, this is significant because lives have been lost and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage has happened. And nobody seems to care.”

Increased frequency, magnitude and duration of floods

“But it was when I read a newspaper article in 2022 that I finally got hold of Younes Alila and said, we are on the same page. Then I sent Younes a paper that I had put together for my caucus colleagues on the state of BC forests to show him that we are on the same page. We should collaborate.”

“My experience is that so often scientists are quiet. They do all this great research work but nobody hears about it. And you never see it unless somebody quotes it.”

A fundamental change in underlying assumptions

“Right off the bat, when I started reading the research papers by Younes, I could see he called for a paradigm shift. I made a 2-minute statement in the legislature. We have been doing it wrong for decades and we need to start doing it right.”

Politics prevents you from doing the right thing

“I have been a public safety minister. I have also been a police officer trying to save people from rising rivers and burning forests. I think a lot of people overlook that experience when they pooh-pooh me for trying to support a different approach in forestry.”

“Politics prevents you from doing the right thing because of the political lens that is put on everything. It was frustrating when I tried to bring the reality of the clearcut logging situation before my colleagues. And getting ignored because it did not fit the political agenda.”

Call for action is recorded in Hansard

“Politicians ignore what they do not understand. By ignoring the consequences of clearcut logging, they put themselves in a pretty serious predicament.”

“When the forestry minister of the day talked about making changes to cutting permits, I asked this question: Does that mean, when I look at the work of Professor Alila…where he says clearcuts are causing increased frequency, magnitude and duration of floods...does that mean the minister can now look at that and not approve cutting permits?”

“And if there is public litigation, I anticipate the courts would say, why did you not change policy? Why did you not change legislation to adapt to this new paradigm shift that we see? By ignoring it all these years, you have increased the risk to public safety.”

TOPIC 3: Perspective as an informed member of the community

“I live in Prince George. I have been to the headwaters of the Fraser Basin. And I have worked in this region for my entire life. And I have observed the changes in hydrology over 50 years.”

“It starts right here! Whatever you get in the urban centre of Metro Vancouver originates in the headwaters of the Fraser Basin. You cannot look at urban hydrology separately from forestry hydrology. The two are married.”

“And that is my concern. Government better wake up because there are liabilities attached to this. There are human lives attached to this that are at risk based on your decision making.”

TOPIC 4: Mike Morris foreshadows a hopeful future outcome if and when there is a political will to make needed changes

“Critically, if we look at this one issue of clearcut logging that causes increased frequency, magnitude and duration of floods but also droughts and wildfires…if we can get this one change as a result of Younes Alila’s research, it will effect so many different things.”

“It is going to change transportation. It is going to effect the economic engine of British Columbia. Forestry will have to change, whether they want to or not. The change is going to re-establish biodiversity.”

Learn from lived experience

“I get accused of being negative every time I speak because I speak about all these bad things going on. But the passion I have for this is based on my experience.”

“It is my responsibility, with all the knowledge and experience that I have and hopefully some wisdom that I have garnered along the way, to try and make the changes based on the experiences that I have had over the years.”

PART TWO: What motivates Younes Alila? His belief and inspiration that science without passion is not science!

The context for the conversation with Mike Morris and Younes Alila is Clear-cutting linked to 18-fold rise in extreme floods, UBC study finds, a story published by UBC Reports in July 2025. The story generated major news coverage in BC because of its relevance for forest management practices.

A few months later, in October, a new study published in the open access journal Frontiers in Environmental Sciences received global attention as featured in a Science Magazine by a press release titled UBC Study Highlights Importance of Monitoring Flood Frequency for Safeguarding B.C. Communities.

TOPIC 5: A watershed is a system and everything is connected

“The forest owes its power to the landscape features, not to its ability to evapotranspirate. That is the headline,” says Younes Alila with passion in his voice.

“Evapotranspiration is necessary but not sufficient to empower the forest and affect hydrology in general and floods and droughts in particular. This can only be revealed through a probabilistic framework.”

“Our research also highlights the potential for natural asset management which supports the context and ecosystem service based approach to land and natural resource management.”

Cause-effect and the space-time relationship

“Thinking like a system means you do not make decisions at the site scale. It is not about a particular stream reach or cross-section, or a bridge or a culvert. You need to step back and look at the big picture.”

“You need to look at the entire stream network and what these flows are doing OVER TIME…AND IN THE LANDSCAPE OF THE WATERSHED.”

“It is the modern SCIENCE OF CAUSATION which imposes the probabilistic framework for investigating the causal relationship between the climate and/or land use coverage change.”

An understanding of cumulative effects is foundational

“The cause-effect relationship is the only way to put to the forefront the desperate need for an understanding of cumulative effects. And the desperate need for thinking about the headwaters when we are making decisions downstream.”

“And guess what? That cumulative effect study, investigation or assessment…that UPSTREAM-DOWNSTREAM CONNECTION…can only be investigated through a causal framework.”

“Cause-effect. The climate is the cause. The effect is the hydrological response. The land use, land cover changes are the cause…and the hydrological response is the effect.”

TOPIC 6: Nature’s laws are inherently probabilistic

“If the cause-effect relationship is not investigated in the probabilistic framework, it is non-causal, which means that it is scientifically indefensible which means that it is not even science.”

“And why do we need that probabilistic framework? Because the hydrologic response is driven by many factors, all of which are occurring RANDOMLY OVER TIME AND IN SPACE. Period.”

“The response is inherently stochastic. Inherently probabilistic. NATURE’S LAWS ARE INHERENTLY PROBABILISTIC. And the only way we can understand nature…in this case the hydrologic response of the landscape…is through that stochastic or probabilistic framework.”

TOPIC 7: Time means the climate dimension and space means the landscape

“The frequency imposes itself by the nature of the response. The response is stochastic by nature. The response of the landscape, the response of the hydrology, or geomorphology or climatology are all stochastic.”

Build an understanding of hydrologic system response based on flow duration analysis

“Our professional practice does not portray an understanding of the environmental controls of the dimension of the frequency, which is critical for proper management of the hydrologic risk. And when I say frequency, it is not just the frequency of the floods and the droughts, IT IS THE FREQUENCY OF THE FLOWS IN GENERAL.”

“Which brings us to the flow duration curve which underpins both Jim Dumont’s Stream Health Methodology and my Flood Risk Methodology. One axis is duration or percent of time. That is basically probability. Frequency is the only thing that makes the investigation of hydrology causal and hence scientifically defensible.”

“My Flood Risk Methodology is about peak flow frequency analysis in a rural setting while Jim Dumont’s Stream Health Methodology is about low flow duration analysis in the urban setting.”

“Both are founded on the probabilistic framework for understanding and predicting hydrology. And that is what is gratifying for me. Independently and for over 30 years, Jim Dumont and I both have been advocating for the same framework.”

“Now the Partnership for Water Sustainability and I have combined forces to reinforce each other’s efforts to make hydrology in professional practice causal and hence defensible in both settings. Hydrology is hydrology!”

TOPIC 8: Attribution science is Younes Alila’s Flood Risk Methodology by another name!

“Climate change scientists have always been overly consumed with extremes. The probabilistic framework has guided them since the mid-1980s. It has evolved into what they now refer to as attribution science. It has been developed aggressively by climate change scientists.”

“Attribution science is also known as extreme event attribution. It is the study of how much human-caused climate change influences specific weather and climate events. It compares observed conditions to what might have happened without human influence.”

“That new framework is PROBABLISTIC in nature. It tells us for instance the extent to which the BC flood of November 2021, which resulted in over $17 billion of damage, is caused by climate and/or land use and forest cover changes. Independently, and without knowing about attribution science, I have been developing that same framework. I rest my case!”

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: Increased frequency, magnitude, duration and LIABILITY of floods.

DOWNLOAD A COPY: https://waterbucket.ca/wcp/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/10/PWSBC_Living-Water-Smart_Mike-Morris-on-flood-risk-and-liability_2025.pdf

About the Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC

Technical knowledge alone is not enough to resolve water challenges facing BC. Making things happen in the real world requires an appreciation and understanding of human behaviour, combined with a knowledge of how decisions are made. It takes a career to figure this out.

The Partnership has a primary goal, to build bridges of understanding and pass the baton from the past to the present and future. To achieve the goal, the Partnership is growing a network in the local government setting. This network embraces collaborative leadership and inter-generational collaboration.