Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia releases "Primer on Integrated Rainwater and Groundwater Management for Lands on Vancouver Island and Beyond"

Mimic the Water Balance

Released in 2008, Living Water Smart, British Columbia’s Water Plan is a call to action to prepare communities for change and do business differently. Actions and targets in Living Water Smart establish expectations as to how land will be developed and water will be used. Now, the Primer on Integrated Rainwater and Groundwater Management for Lands on Vancouver Island and Beyond provides local governments with guidance for implementation of Living Water Smart principles on the ground.

Linking Rainfall, the Landscape, Groundwater and Streamflow

The Primer introduces building blocks that can inform ‘water-centric’ policy development by BC municipalities. Embedding a science-based understanding in an Official Community Plan (OCP), for example, can make a difference on the ground. Thus, the Primer objectives are three-fold:

• provide insight into the regulatory and educational context for moving from awareness to action in order to protect watershed and stream health in BC;
• explain how introduction of the Rainfall Spectrum concept a decade ago led us to look at rainfall differently in BC;
• foreshadow how pioneer research in the Englishman River watershed in the City of Parksville on Vancouver Island can similarly lead us to look at groundwater differently.

The City of Parksville OCP is a demonstration application for the Primer. The learning captured in this Primer is being shared with other local governments on Vancouver Island. Knowledge-sharing is being facilitated through the Inter-Regional Education Initiative.

TO LEARN MORE: To download a copy, click on Primer on Integrated Raiinwater & Groundwater Management for Lands on Vancouver Island and Beyond. 

For a section-by-section synopsis of the Primer storyline, click on Table 1. The first five sections of this Primer establish the context for a science-based, integrated and holistic approach to rainwater and groundwater management. This context allows local governments to establish expectations: This is what we want to collectively and incrementally achieve over time, and this is how we will work together to get there. To close the loop, the sixth and last section provides guidance so that champions in the local government setting will be informed and can then lead the move from awareness to action.