Citizens are waking up to a new freshwater reality for B.C. Water matters and people care — but is government listening?

A recent surge of news stories has raised concerns about the lack of protection for B.C.’s water. This includes palpable outrage from citizens across the province that Nestlé, a giant multinational corporation, is taking groundwater for free from the Fraser Valley. This “free” water, a public asset, is then being sold back to us in bottles for a pretty profit.

This story of corporate free riding is just the tip of the freshwater iceberg. It points to a much larger issue that the current rules that govern water are archaic and downright unfair. It highlights the fact that citizens have been kept in-the-dark for too long; being told that protections exist when there is no one actually minding the store.

B.C. is the only province in the country that does not regulate groundwater use and this “great groundwater giveaway” has been going on for over 100 years. The source of this problem can be traced to the B.C. Water Act — the province’s primary legislation for managing water — a relic first passed in 1909.

The principles enshrined in this Act were developed during a ‘wild west’ era and designed to create certainty for homesteaders and promote mining in an undeveloped region. Like much of society at the turn of that century, it ignored First Nations and their rights and title. It was passed long before the notion of climate change entered our consciousness, and when lakes, rivers and aquifers seemed limitless; their degradation unthinkable.

Fast forward 100 years and B.C. is a very different place. High-tech, high rises and even rising tides are what defines much of our province today. Our population has grown ten-fold, our economy is diverse and sophisticated, First Nations are central players in B.C.’s cultural and economic future. And communities are now facing a new water reality, with mounting threats to both quantity and quality of their local home waters.

As these threats materialize, we are waking up to the mis-management of our province’s most precious resource. The rules are simply not sufficient to protect local rivers, lakes and groundwater from the impacts of development, whether it is bottled water plants, oil pipeline spills, fracking leaks, “run-of-the-river” hydroelectric, gravel mining, or industrial agricultural pollution. Or even just wasteful neighbours. While these threats vary, the lack of meaningful watershed protection remains consistent.

This rising tide of citizen concern for the health of their home waters was strikingly apparent in the findings of a recent report, The State of the Water Movement in British Columbia: A Waterscape Scan and Needs Assessment of B.C. Watershed-Based Groups, released by the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia and the University of Victoria.

This report identified an emerging movement of more than 230 citizen-based groups working on water protection in their communities. These groups, made up of local volunteers work on everything from stream cleanups to political advocacy. Through a comprehensive survey the report identifies clear themes that point us towards a better path.