Partnership for Water Sustainability in BC

“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,” stated Murray Walters.

“In the background, we are having our conversations about asset management in general. Conversations about how we keep it going for gray infrastructure and bring in natural assets. Our parks group is doing land inventories. All of this can be presented as a package. The EAP program is embedded in our Integrated Action Plan. This supports City Plan: Nanaimo Reimagined which provides direction for the coming 25 years on everything…land use, transportation, climate adaptation, etc. We made sure EAP is part of that. It is firmly rooted,” stated Bill Sims.

“My career in local government began in era when money was really tight and we had to fight so hard for every nickel. We have to return to the ethic of solutions being affordable and effective. Otherwise, a seismic shift will occur in local government because of overall politics. The mood in society has changed and blunt instruments are going to come down. That is my fear. Now more than ever communities need to learn from past experience. And society needs balanced perspectives and alternate viewpoints,” stated Pete Steblin.

“Politicians know how to get elected. But do they know all that other stuff that they need to know? Once upon a time, you had well-respected community leaders who everybody trusted,” stated Darrell Mussatto. “In the old days, voters elected community leaders to municipal council because those people brought certain skillsets with them. Today, the people getting elected know how to use social media to get people to vote for them. But do they know and care about what matters in local government? To ask the tough questions, you must be informed and educated about what matters.”

“I am an implementer. That reflects my career history,” states Michael Blackstock. “Blue Ecology theory emerged from practice and from my experience on the frontlines as a forester and as a mediator and a negotiator for the provincial government and BC Hydro over the past 35 years. That is where I saw the gap and the need for Blue Ecology. And now I see the need for fusion of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Intelligence through Blue Ecology.”

“In the 1990s, there was trouble in paradise. Sound familiar? In response, the British Columbia provincial government launched the Georgia Basin Initiative and motivated regional planning through passage of the Regional Growth Strategies Act. It was all hands on deck and catalyst for the green infrastructure movement. Political leadership and commitment to a livable region plan. That is the story in a sentence. This past summer, I finished writing the Chronicle of Green Infrastructure Innovation in the Metro Vancouver Region (1994-2024). It is a 500-page tome,” stated Kim Stephens.

Robert Hicks is skilled at providing historical context and perspective for “the big picture” of today. “When you remove tree cover and pave over pervious surfaces so that they are hard, you effectively double the volume of runoff water to be managed and it drains faster. There are also two other consequences. No longer can you sustain minimum flow requirements in streams. And no longer can you recharge groundwater. This is the orphaned resource. It has just been so easy to overlook groundwater historically,” stated Robert Hicks.

Younes Alila is in the news because he is raising the alarm. His message boils down to RISK AND LIABILITY. The actual consequences of clearcut logging, he warns, are magnified in this era of weather extremes. “Like many others, MLA Mike Morris stumbled upon some of my papers. Not long ago, we were both interviewed by the same journalist for an article. We got to know each other through that article. And then we started talking. Mike Morris asked me questions about hydrology and hydrological responses,” stated Younes Alila.

In the 2000s, the Green Infrastructure Partnership played a prominent role in leading changes in local government attitudes in the Metro Vancouver region. This influence cascaded from elected representative at Municipal Council and Regional Board tables to practitioners in the trenches. “Bringing together and inspiring people, especially those in the trenches, to keep fighting the good fight,” stated Ray Fung. “That is basically what we did in the 2000s and continue to do! How do you judge that time with the advantage of hindsight? It is always a confluence of different things.”

“The provincial government had taken on an interest in climate action after the 2003 Kelowna fires. And we were looking in a new way at infrastructure innovation and the consequences of how we went about developing regions and urban spaces. It became clear that if one did not have a way of building confidence amongst practitioners, the rate of innovation would be slow. And we needed quite a lot of innovation in order to achieve some of the things that we hoped to achieve through regional growth strategies,” stated Dale Wall.