Today in the House John Slater, MLA for Boundary-Similkameen, rose today in the house to speak about the importance of water and the government’s plans for water management.
Naturally, Michael rose in response to that members statement drawing attention to the current shortcomings in watermanagment especially in the case of the North Alouette here in Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows.
Below you will find the draft Hansard and when the official record is published it will be posted.
MAINTAINING THE ESSENTIAL RESOURCE OF LIFE: WATER
J. Slater: B.C. is proud of our water resources. We rely on them to be healthy and sustainable for us, for our economy and for our environment. British Columbia proudly showed the beauty and the greatness of our streams, lakes, and snowy mountains to the world during the Olympic Winter Games. Our streams and lakes are part of our identity and an internationally recognized drawing card for our visitors. We rely on water every time we turn on the shower, wash our clothes, eat our lunch or flick a light switch.
But do you usually think about the water you use? Do you think about keeping our water safe and sustainable? For almost two years now the B.C. government announced the Living Water Smart plan, B.C.’s water plan and vision to keep our water healthy and safe. Today I want to focus on some of the progress in protecting our water and planning for when we don’t have enough. I also want to demonstrate how a partnership approach is helping us to find solutions.
Let me begin with the new initiative to modernize the B.C. Water Act. The Water Act is the heart of the water governance framework. The act currently is 101 years old. It’s also one of our oldest laws and doesn’t always respond well to today’s water challenges. With our population increasing and hot, dry summers becoming more common, changes may be needed to the way we allocate our water. Partnerships are essential to share water stewardship roles more broadly and to encourage collaboration between other governments, users and our citizens.
Right now all across the province British Columbians are rising to the challenge, thinking about and sharing their views and solutions for the modernization of our Water Act. They’re getting involved in the law review process through traditional and innovative engagement methods such as workshops, submissions, a discussion paper, our website and a blog that is collecting input into policy development, a first for B.C.
WAM is an opportunity to ensure the principles underlying the Water Act respond to modern expectations as well as promote stream health and our water security. We are more than halfway through the 12 workshops being held around the province. As a champion of this process, I am hearing a desire from all the stakeholders to work collaboratively and move towards Water Act into the 21st century to better serve our children, grandchildren as well as nature.
We have so much to gain from rethinking the way we manage our water and so much to lose if we don’t. But what do we do if we don’t have enough water to go around? Last summer — and, looking at predictions, probably again this summer —there wasn’t enough water to go around to keep our streams healthy. Below-normal snowpack conditions across much of the Interior indicate potential water supply challenges for this summer.
Environment Canada’s long-range forecast is for warmer-than-normal weather over the next three months. We will once again see widespread water restrictions, dropping well levels and drought conditions creating stresses and causing economic losses. Being prepared to respond to these droughts in these communities for chances of sustaining agriculture and other economic activities during dry periods…. It assists with protecting fish and aquatic ecosystems from the negative impacts of low stream levels and warmer rivers.
To reduce the impacts of drought, the British Columbia government, in partnership with key federal and provincial agencies, is developing a drought response plan to guide action before and after a drought. The drought response plan will build on existing tools such as the Dealing with Drought handbook used by water providers to help them prepare drought management plans. In preparing the plans, advice from First Nations, local governments, water users and other stakeholders is being sought.
Once again, workshops have been held with interested people and groups in various locations around the province. These sessions have gathered input on provincial- and regional-specific actions that should be taken in times of low stream flows or drought.
The drought response plan is intended primarily to guide provincial government actions during drought, but we are also capturing input and will reflect in the plan recommended actions for our partners such as federal agencies, water licences, local governments, First Nations communities and water users.
The efficient use of water is essential if we are to sustain the environment and our economy, particularly in times of drought. Did you know that British Columbia uses 65 percent more water than the average for a developed country. There are easy wins by making water conservation part of our life and our health and lifestyle. Okanagan water supply and demand project is an example.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. How much water have we got, how much water are we using, and how much are we going to need in the future? In our driest basin, one which I am very intimate with, the Okanagan, a groundbreaking study that is unique and powerful in many ways has been accomplished. The demand project will be used as a model throughout other areas in the province.
We are leading the rest of Canada by having a powerful water accounting model that will allow communities to understand the availability of water supplies and the demands that they place on that supply. Knowing that, communities can better adapt to climate change and population growth.
M. Sather: My pleasure to respond to the member on the Water Act. He talked about the Water Act modernization that’s under way, the process, and there’s a discussion paper that’s out there. I got a copy of it, and thanks to the government for sending that to me, whomever did that. However, I just got it on the 29th. It or was sent out on the 29th of March.
The member mentioned the discussion groups, the workshops. Although there are 12 of these, nine of them are for First Nations only. There are only three others — in Nanaimo, Kelowna and Nelson. Nothing whatsoever in the Lower Mainland. Two of them are already over — March 5 and 12.
We have very active and interested stewardship groups in Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows. They’re very involved with an illegal water diversion by the Aquilini Group from the North Alouette River, which the government is intimately aware of, I’m sure. Yet none of them will have a chance to participate in their communities. Nor were they sent a copy of the discussion paper.
I’ve gone on to the website and tried to download the URL, but it comes up as not available. It doesn’t seem very accessible, so I’m hoping the government will pick up on that.
With regard, of course, to the illegal diversion in Maple Ridge, we’re still waiting. Community groups are waiting for a report from Crown counsel as to what is or is not going to happen. The Crown has the option to notify community groups who have an interest if they feel it’s in the public interest, and it certainly is, so we’re hoping that that will happen.
When we look at the modernization discussion paper, a lot of it is about whether there are going to be guidelines or regulations. Of course, guidelines are not going to do it. We need to have more teeth in the new act, and I’m certainly hoping that there will be.
I’m concerned about the precedent that the government has set with streamside protection regulations, whereby there’s been a movement to self-regulation and -reporting — not only reporting but setting standards, if you will — by consultants hired by the proponent. We don’t want to go down that road again with the Water Act. I’m certainly hoping that we won’t.
The paper talks about either devolving or a delegation approach. Devolving would be sharing with local government. I have some concerns around that — in their capacity to be able to do that — and I’m hoping the Ministry of Environment isn’t abrogating their responsibilities in that regard. Delegating would be around establishing a watershed agency. This has, I think, some promise if the government goes that route, because I know in my community there are certainly agencies and individuals that could provide very good information to that approach.
Finally, on the groundwater issue the problem that I’m seeing so far in the discussion paper is that it doesn’t address the issues of development affecting groundwater or, for example, forestry practices affecting groundwater. Those are issues that we’ve had in Maple Ridge in the Blue Mountain and Thornhill areas. When they’ve gone at length to government, they’ve been told in the end that they can try to find out who’s responsible. “Go to the Ministry of Health.” In other words, if you get sick, that’s your only recourse. So we have to do much, much better on that.
The discussion paper talks about extraction and use though. We need more than that. We need more than regulations around that. We need protection from other land uses, which can very negatively affect water.
Water is going to be, as we know, a huge, huge issue in this century. I am pleased that the government has the discussion paper. I’m looking forward to positive results from that. Their amendments to the Water Act that they brought in this year did not help, in my regard. In fact, they extended the period by which an individual can extract water without a licence.
I’m concerned, as I expressed to the minister around that act, that there’s a lack of capacity in the Ministry of Environment to actually enforce regulations or guidelines, albeit they’re pretty hard to enforce. So it’s important that the government not drop the ball by devolving responsibility to somebody else. It’s important that the Water Act changes have teeth in them such that we can actually have some effect.
J. Slater: Just for clarification, the website that we’re using is www.livingwatersmart.ca. The links are certainly working on that. My colleague just told me that everything’s working fine on that. So I encourage everybody to have a look at that site and make sure that all the information that they need or is required is on that site. Yes, we can’t get around to the whole province. The 14 workshops are well attended. The workshops that I’ve been at have had First Nations attendees as well as the three First Nations workshops throughout the province.
I encourage everybody to get on to the website if you want some input, or mail it to us. We certainly do encourage everybody with all their concerns to make sure that we are hearing what everybody has to say, because what government does is only part of the solution. Government cannot manage water alone. Through Living Water Smart B.C., we challenge British Columbians — businesses, the farms, the communities — to protect and preserve and conserve our water.
