Our water future is just beginning

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Anna Warwick Sears

“Patience, time and money accommodate all things.” – Spanish Proverb

BC Parliament on a summer day. Photo by Brynne Herbison

BC is in the middle of another resource development boom. Water isn’t one of them, but as always, is central to everything.

More than 100 years ago, the Water Act was created to bring order to the mining industry. Prospectors needed flumes to wash the gravels and extract the ores, and they needed to know that the guy upstream wouldn’t divert the flow.

Times have changed, and the resources are different. The new gold is natural gas, along with hydro-power, expansion of irrigated agriculture and the thirst of growing cities. The Water Act is being updated as the Water Sustainability Act, to protect the needs of the new economy while also protecting natural water systems.

We’ve had waves of opportunities for public comment, starting in 2008 when the Premier’s office released Living Water Smart, their plan for BC’s water future. Now, years later, we are seeing how our recommendations have been weighed and measured, in the final legislative proposal released on October 18th.

This is really an historic time and when the Act passes the legislature this coming spring, we’ll be throwing a big party. On the other hand, turning the law into regulations and making the changes they’re calling for will take active, tenacious involvement of everyone who cares about water. It will be a tall task with ticklish trade-offs.

Continue reading →

Everything you wanted to know about watershed governance

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Anna Warwick Sears

“The need for collaboration is especially clear for water. Few things are so intimately linked with life and prosperity.” – Brandes, Marshall, and Sears

The biggest watershed new stories are usually about conflicts; lately in BC, this means mines and pipelines. People want jobs, but they also want BC to be beautiful. What’s the balance? In the spirit of Building Bridges, it was a pleasure to join forces with Oliver Brandes (of the Polis Institute), and David Marshall (from the Fraser Basin Council) on an op-ed for the Vancouver Sun, promoting watershed collaboration.

Water leaders of the future.

The article grew from a watershed gathering held in Vancouver in late January – a crash course on collaboration, and a chance to learn what other groups are doing in BC. Basically, we’ve all been going it alone, with little formal communication between the Island, the Fraser, the Columbia, the Okanagan, and other watersheds.

Our op-ed focused on collaboration as a principle for watershed management, but we purposely didn’t dig into watershed governance because it hasn’t been as well-defined in public conversation. My impression at the gathering was that governance means different things to different people. Here, I want to share my sense of the common threads.

In a perfect world, environmental agencies would have lots of boots on the ground, and excellent data on natural resources and economics. They’d be making decisions that suit local needs and fund health care and education province-wide. Instead, the ministries are shrinking, we have pared-down budgets and high demand for raw materials. Yet we still need to protect water sources. We have to do more with less, and do more, regardless. Continue reading →

Building Bridges for Okanagan Water in 2012

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Anna Warwick Sears

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” -St. Francis of Assisi

Welcome to 2012. It is almost 5 months since I began this blog, “Building Bridges,” and the new year, when we traditionally look back and look ahead, seems like a good time to reflect on the message and purpose of these regular Okanagan Water updates. A novice blogger, I’ve been learning a lot – talking to veterans of social media, water enthusiasts, and my select and devoted readership.

This Christmas was spent with friends at a boat-in cottage - after a thrilling lake crossing. Beautiful, but cold

If there is anything I’d like people to take away, it is the conviction that in a time of change, we have the power to work together and solve water issues as they arise. There are pockets of real problems in the valley, especially with groundwater, and many potential future challenges with climate change, but with planning and collaboration we can avoid severe crises. Starting with what’s necessary, and then carving off what’s possible, we can begin to tackle what now might seem insurmountable. Continue reading →

Simple, home-grown solutions for the Osoyoos international water agreement.

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” – Confucius

It is hard to think of anything more controversial than “Americans taking our water.” Questions come up at almost every public meeting. The concerns are not entirely unfounded: in general (as Trudeau famously remarked), living next door to the US is a lot like sleeping next to an elephant – feeling every twitch and grunt. This underlying sentiment, and the need to meet Okanagan water demand and environmental flows while being good neighbours, has created intense interest in the renewal of the International Joint Commission’s (IJC) agreement for Osoyoos Lake.

The Zosel Dam, circa 1970 - from the IJC website.

In this post, I want to share our “Made in the Okanagan” solution for the 2013 renewal of the Osoyoos Lake Operating Orders for Zosel Dam.

The orders’ main goals are to control floods and prevent water shortages. But everyone wants more certainty about water supplies on both sides of the international border – including water for the Okanagan’s reviving sockeye run. The reach most at issue for the US is the short stretch of river between the dam and its confluence with the mighty Similkameen River. While “certainty” may be out of reach in this era of environmental change, I feel we’ve come up with a strong set of action steps to get to our (bilateral) goals. Continue reading →

An international watershed board for Osoyoos Lake?

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.” – John-David Bartoe, astronaut

The one time I went to a reunion with my grandmother, I couldn’t get over how much these new-found relatives looked just like me (big smiles, round faces). My family had doubled in size overnight. That’s the feeling I had this week at the bi-national Osoyoos Lake Water Science Forum. Our Canadian maps may stop at the 49^thparallel, but the basin continues south and includes a larger watershed family. If we are going to use the slogan, “One Valley, One Water,” we have to think bigger.

Osoyoos Lake from space, where the distinctions blur between where one jurisdiction begins and another ends.

Alex Louie, who filmed the proceedings for the Osoyoos Indian Band, reminded the group that from the indigenous point of view, the international border doesn’t exist. The Colville Confederated Tribes are the same people as the Okanagan Nation. Looking around the room, you could mostly say the same about the residents of Oroville and Osoyoos (the U.S. and Canadian towns along the lakeshore), or even the visiting university and agency people – shared values, shared backgrounds, shared interests.

There’s no question that Osoyoos Lake will be healthier if we can take a common, ecosystem-based approach to water quality and water supply problems. Lake levels, flow rates, watermilfoil control, shoreline access and zoning all lend themselves to collaborative processes. On the other hand, we can’t just throw nationhood and politics out the window.

Water (ironically enough) is a highly inflammatory issue. Continue reading →

Osoyoos Lake: Live

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“It starts with the water. If you don’t have good water, the plants and animals will tell us we aren’t doing our job…They are an important part of our family – if a place doesn’t have plants and animals, it won’t have humans.” – Chief Clarence Louie, Osoyoos Lake Water Science Forum, September 18, 2011.

Welcome to the Salmon Nation. One day into the Osoyoos Lake Water Science Forum and my head is filled with fish. For thousands of years, the Okanagan people fished sockeye here. They are salmon people – with a territory stretching south to Oregon and north and east through the southern interior of BC. We are here in Osoyoos this week to talk about a lot of different issues, but none more symbolic and integrative than the return of the sockeye.

Small girl, tiny dog, huge salmon.

The Osoyoos sockeye run is the eastern frontier for fish coming up the Columbia. The run used to reach far up the system, but dozens of smaller dams interrupted the passage. Last night, Chief Clarence Louie told a story about how when the Grand Coulee dam was completed, they invited the chiefs and dancers to come and celebrate in their regalia. “There is a picture of all these chiefs, standing and looking at the dam, and I just think, how sad that is, how mad and disappointed those chiefs must be, knowing that the dams have taken away the salmon.” Continue reading →

Water Stewardship for the 21st Century

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“The creation of the Water Stewardship Council is a significant action in advancing water conservation and quality…” – Greg Selinger, premier of Manitoba, on the national Water Stewardship Council (June 2011).

I think we might be going back to the future with our new paradigm of watershed collaboration. Having the right people in the room has always been a recipe for good government (probably before the Romans and Greeks…). What may be new is formally using collaboration to improve our resource management.

Goofing around at a photo-shoot for the Sustainable Water Strategy - From L to R: Anna Warwick Sears, Bernie Bauer, Tom Siddon, Kellie Garcia, and Nelson Jatel.

And let’s put “new” in quotes. The Okanagan’s Water Stewardship Council, Ontario’s Conservation Authorities and Alberta’s Watershed Planning and Advisory Councils have been on the landscape for decades. But never mind that. Ten years into the 21st century, this idea is coming of age. Continue reading →

Water leadership in changing times: trials and innovations

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African proverb, quoted by Al Gore

I got fairly hot under the collar at a Bill Rees’ talk last fall – in my mild-mannered Canadian way. He’s a UBC professor famous for his work on ecological footprints – great stuff, that I’ve used to teach classes in the past. Where I took issue was the tenor of Bill’s talk. To begin with, I never do well with extremely grim forecasts. Being in the environmental field, the future can easily be cast in a dim light, but fearless optimism is more to my taste. We start with the premise that the situation is workable.

World population from 1800 to 2100, based on UN 2004 projections and US Census Bureau historical estimates - by Loren Cobb

Bill’s subject was climate change and population growth, the likely tides of environmental refugees, and how we needed to draw the line in some way on our own growth and development.

I grant that we need to change our approach to the growth of our cities, but as the world approaches 7 billion people this year, we have to accept that some will move here. We even welcome them – Canadians are aging, and we need workers of all kinds and levels of education. Canada is one of the world’s great immigrant nations.

Although climate change is likely to be gentler to western Canada than many other parts of the world, we won’t be untouched. Climate adaptation is, as they say, all about the water. I’m often asked, “When will we run out of water? Should we stop all growth and development?” Continue reading →

Watershed governance: how to build a vehicle for any terrain

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

I have a terrible habit of using car metaphors when I talk about water governance. I can’t say it is climate-friendly connection, but they come out of nowhere to carry the conversation.

A photo opportunity in a Canberra parking lot, May 2010

In a previous post, I talked about our quandary: needing to collaborate and make decisions about water, and not having a formal structure to work with. The government of BC has recently invested in several reports on governance as part of Water Act Modernization, and the end result is likely to be “enabling legislation.” That is, the ability to establish a watershed organization under law, without specifying what form it takes or authority it holds.

This is when we all start talking about vehicles for moving forward. To a certain extent, everyone would like to engineer some kind of ideal vehicle for watershed management – a car of the future that can make it through any terrain. We take this conversational detour, even while repeating “one size doesn’t fit all.” Continue reading →

Osoyoos Lake – bringing international agreements down home

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Anna Warwick Sears

“Wherever you go, there you are” – Mac Rauch (Buckaroo Banzai)

There will be heavy-hitters from Ottawa and Washington D.C. in Osoyoos next month, but they won’t be wearing dark suits and carrying brief cases. They’ll be listening and talking to US and Canadian locals about the renewal of the Osoyoos Lake Operating Orders, hearing water science updates, and sharing in-season sockeye salmon, apples and pears.

I’m really interested in the potential of this cultural and political mixing, and the opportunity to be innovative when you take a bilateral agreement down home.

: Bringing it all back home: In 2007, locals from the towns of Osoyoos and Oliver (in Canada) gathered with residents of Oroville and other communities just south of the border, joined by leading scientists, politicians, policy makers and agency folks – to discuss international policy for Osoyoos Lake.

Every good relationship needs care and communication – including our international co-habitation of Osoyoos Lake, which crosses the 49th parallel. Most Canadians are a bit on edge about the US thirst for water. We want to cooperate, but there is a cautious pragmatism. The Okanagan has relatively low flows, and we rely on irrigated agriculture. On the other side, they have trouble in the Okanogan (American spelling) “keeping up with the Canadians,” who come in droves to buy inexpensive vacation properties. The Americans have irrigated agriculture and water concerns of their own.

Then there are those that know no boundaries – the easternmost run of Pacific sockeye salmon in the Columbia are enjoying their second record-breaking year in a row for Osoyoos Lake and the Okanagan River. This has huge significance for the Okanagan Nation, the Syilx people who have relied on and celebrated these salmon for thousands of years.

In September, the Town of Osoyoos will host the 2011 Osoyoos Lake Water Science Forum: “Shared water, shared future: bridges to sustainability for Osoyoos Lake”. It is a follow-up to a 2007 Forum, but a step forward – very interesting and very unusual. Continue reading →

Building Bridges

Okanagan Basin Water Board – Reflections on Okanagan water

Tag Archives: Water Governance