Tag Archives: watershed management

Our water future is just beginning

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

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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.

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Not waiting for Noah

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“Planning is best done in advance.” – Anonymous

Neighborhood on the South Saskatchewan river, June 2013

Flying into Calgary at the end of June, everyone on the plane was glued to the windows, staring at the mess of mud and debris from the Great Flood.

Eventually, rivers always have their own way.

Embarrassingly, I was there to speak at the Canadian Water Summit about collaborative drought planning. By a miracle of organization, the Summit was hastily relocated from the flooded Stampede grounds to a nearby airport hotel. I gave my talk as planned, with some blushing and a few words about unpredictable extreme events.

One of many outrageous pictures from the recent flooding in Colorado

One of many outrageous pictures from the recent flooding in Colorado

A drought could come next year.

The situation was made even more ironic, because I’d just spent several months getting my head around collaborative flood planning, much more topical under the circumstances. The deadly mudslides in BC last year had left me feeling that we are even less prepared for floods than water shortages. Continue reading →

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Water Day, every day

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“Why isn’t every day Water Day?” – Peter Gleick, on Twitter

Dear Readers,

Taken by Judie Steeves for her article "Myth of Abundance" in the Kelowna Capital News

Canada Water Week, and World Water Day (March 22) have come and gone, and I hope you all took the opportunity to lift a long, cool glass and marvel at the wonder and privilege to have such a beautiful, precious thing flow freely from our taps.  Nonetheless, this seems a good opportunity to celebrate progress in the year past, to look at where we’ve fallen behind, and to make plans for the future.

First, I want to apologize for the long blog-drought on Building Bridges. Over the past few months I’ve been taking time for family: the short illness and peaceful passing of my father. He had a great love for this blog, and I often thought of him while writing – to educate and entertain an intelligent, caring member of the public. In that spirit, I continue. Continue reading →

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Of toilets and bird sanctuaries: diversions in the water cycle

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

At the San Francisco Exploratorium there is a drinking fountain made from a toilet. It’s a brand new toilet, fed by the cold, pure waters of the California coast range, yet oddly disturbing. Would you bend your head and take refreshment?

Toilet drinking fountain

It's eerily disturbing to see a drinking fountain made from a toilet.

Modern plumbing must be somewhere near the apex of civilization, carrying away everything smelly and unclean, and freeing us from water-borne disease. Stuff just goes away and we don’t give it another thought. “Water is the universal solvent” my chemistry teacher said.

But water and waste don’t really go away. For much of the world it’s a good rule of thumb to live upstream. Here in Canada, we have the high technology to clean and polish our effluent, and voilà, it’s ready for “recycling”. I’m quite in awe of this process: huge volumes, unusual innovations, and bursts of controversy. Continue reading →

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Everything you wanted to know about watershed governance

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“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 →

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Water and the Future

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“Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.” – Jim Dator

Sometimes I can’t resist philosophical bones thrown by speakers on the internet. One recent video was on changing spending behaviour to save money, but it introduced the interesting idea of a wrestling match between our present and future selves.

A thoughtful woman writer from a Pompeii fresco. Someone who might appreciate a bit of advice from the future.

It’s an unequal competition.  In the present, I want to have hot apple pie and lie on the couch. My future self would prefer me to eat lightly and exercise more, but she isn’t around to speak for her interests. Instead, she relies on my fuzzy and sometimes skeptical sense of cause and effect: “Will this latte really make me fat and broke in 20 years?”

We regularly remind each other about saving resources for our grandchildren. There are many changes, small and big, that individuals and communities can make, adding up to water savings, energy savings, and money in the bank. But how do we move from “knowing what to do” to actually doing it? Continue reading →

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Why I stopped worrying and learned to love Water Act Modernization

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“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” ― Julian of Norwich

The other night I gave a talk to the North Okanagan Naturalists Club: a group of lively, mostly retired folks, interested in parks, birding and botany.  Given only half an hour, and asked to cover the spectrum of water issues, I bounced along topics relating to biology and the environment, trying to build a bridge between this nature theme and the nuts and bolts of water management.

A cross section of Okanagan aquifers, from the Okanagan Waterscape Poster ( see: www.obwb.ca/okanagan_waterscapes).

Hands shot up at the end of the talk, launching into a public discussion on natural resources.  Rather than fish and riparian restoration, the Naturalists wanted to talk about water agreements with the Americans, Okanagan population growth, and water law.

One woman in the third row, stood up and said, “What’s wrong with us? When are we ever going to regulate groundwater?”  While I don’t like to put a too positive spin on it, it felt good to say – “Water policy is slow to change, but I believe we will have this legislation in place in the next few years.” Right now, BC is reforming the century-old Water Act into the new Water Sustainability Act, and although we can debate the details, groundwater is one reason to rally behind getting it done. Continue reading →

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Building Bridges for Okanagan Water in 2012

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“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 →

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It’s like money in the (snow)bank

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“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” – John Ruskin
 
Yesterday in Kelowna, I saw a woman standing on the sidewalk, all decked out in ski gear – boots and skis on.  It was dark, and there was no snow.  I don’t have an explanation, just to say, many people move here for the winter sports.

Snow in the Okanagan - it's not just for skiiers.

 
If you aren’t a skier, and your winter experience involves driving around, fighting the elements, snow seems like a terrible bother.  I won’t post the picture of my totaled Toyota on the Coquihalla.  Whether you love it or not, I’d argue that snow is even more important to the Okanagan in the summer than the winter. 
 
Think of snow as a giant, slow-release water reservoir.  Most of the planning and infrastructure changes we need for adapting to climate change involve ways to adapt to changes in snow cover. Less snow means less skiing, less boating, less wine, less apples, less cherries and most other things we hold dear.  Continue reading →
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No vacation in the Salmon Nation

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“All men are equal before fish.” – Herbert Hoover

Last week, I attended a workshop in Portland, Oregon, on the future of salmon under climate change.  Our delegation had been invited to talk about the resurgence of sockeye in the Okanagan River, and our experiences with collaboration. Scientists, managers, fishers, First Nations, and other friends of fish, gathered from around the north Pacific to talk about good news, bad news, and what’s possible. It was a diverse group from far-flung geography,  bound together by the need to manage salmon under rapidly changing conditions.

And while much of the conversation was focused on science, there was an important thread about values. What we protect and care for depends strongly on what we value as communities.

While there is uncertainty about the impacts of climate change in specific salmon areas, almost all models project the same outcome: warming waters, summer and winter. Warmer summer waters interfere with spawning, rearing, and migration – and can lead to fish kills in oxygen-poor water.  Warmer waters in winter (particularly in the ocean) could expand the range of salmon to the north as the sea ice breaks up; but this wouldn’t replace the loss of salmon to southern ecosystems and communities. Continue reading →

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