SEHAB Member: Jack Minard

Area: Central Vancouver Island/Campbell River

Community Advisor: Dave Davies

Date: November 2015

Key Issues:

What top three points can you distill from community input to take to DFO RHQ?

1. The absence of DFO as a regulator and protector of fish and fish habitat

2. Money made available through the RFPCC is not being thought out carefully enough. These projects should be actual priorities on a watershed basis. There is no money for the planning that would allow for this. There is no money for monitoring.

3. Drought and flooding – extreme hydrographs with too much water running off too rapidly while the summer has nothing left. Add to this the lack of snowpack and melting glaciers, climate change continues to exacerbate this

Stories:

A few examples of successes, failures, challenges.

Success

The Staff and politicians of the City of Courtenay were recently treated to a tour called “The Good, Bad and Ugly” put on by a local community partnership of stewardship groups. The tour focused on activities that took place over the past year and in one case has been impacting valuable habitat for many years.

The objective of the tour was to gain technical understanding of the how and why taken by engineering and planning departments and to impart any knowledge exchange with tour organizers. It was also an objective to show politicians how important it is to have regulatory frameworks in place to protect environmental amenities. Priority setting needs to include the protection of these amenities, particularly fresh water and aquatic corridors.

The tour was a huge success with the City Council passing a resolution to put water conservation it all of its aspects as a key priority for 2016. The engineering staff and planning staff were amazed at the depth of knowledge with the various groups and have agreed to involve stewardship groups early in the process of development.

Failure

A recent re-assessment of the Province’s Sensitive Inventory (SEI) revealed that, although slowed somewhat the dramatic loss of sensitive ecosystems continues.

Challenge

An ongoing challenge is the lack of monitoring undertaken at any level. A Gaps Analysis document completed some years ago revealed that there has been some improvements in what municipalities are demanding of developers designed to protect environmental features however, the development process ends with the development permit and the developer goes ahead. Part of the challenge is that in most cases the developer did not follow many of the conditions laid out in the permit and have continued to damage ecosystems. The other part of the challenge is that there is no capacity in municipalities or Regional Districts to do monitoring.

A clear example of this is a multi-family condominium type development that designed infiltration galleries under the building to receive all roof run off. The design was to meet 50 year rain events by diverting the vast majority of rainfall into the ground with an overflow pipe that carries any overflow, but at the slightest rainfall the outlet from these galleries is flowing freely. Multiple requests have been made to the jurisdiction to look into this but have not been acted on.

The remaining challenge in this scenario is that as it is private property, stewardship groups are reluctant to install flow meters or any other technology to determine if these galleries are working or not. And finally, if they are not functioning in the way they were designed then what can be done as they are now under a fully sold out development.

Issues Specific to SEHAB’s Work Plan:

Submissions, Comments from Groups:

None