Articles
6th February 2011
EDITOR
EDITORS NOTE: Nelle Maxey is an activist in the Kootneys. She has kindly made some comments on the proposed changes to the Water Act and those comments are below. She also sent along her submission to the government and it is attached for your use.
I have learned a lot since I wrote this but my main issues still stand:
1) Public ownership of water, at that time the government website said "the government owns all the water" but we have pounded into their heads they are just the manager of water which is a public trust, now it must be written into the legislation.
2) Lack of funding for staff and water SUPPLY data collection and worse yet lack of useful water supply data especially related to the risks to that supply in any form.
On this point I note that the government held a Water Science Strategy meeting in August of 2010 and still haven't published the report on their water science strategy (WSS) which the living water smart website still says will be published in Dec 2010. I asked about this on the blog in January and was told it would be published "soon". I am beginning to suspect they are withholding it until after this second round of comment is complete. Of course without this report it's impossible to know the details of their guidelines plans and how they are going to be making water allocation decisions "based on science" as they told us in those workshops. In the workshop I was in, someone yelled, "Who's science!"
They have completely broken this whole data collection and interpretation part away from the rest of the public comment structure. I'm sure many enviro scientists will tear their strategy apart if they ever get around to making it public.
3) Watershed Protection from resource extraction activities
There are NO Details how they will integrate water protection "across jurisdictions" as they so cutely put it. It is of the upmost importance that our watersheds be restored and protected. This is the real way to conserve water as you will see in my slide presentation below. The fact that resource extraction activities are not even covered by the Water Act is a little know fact that must be shared far and wide. This act is about public use of water not about resource extraction use.
4) Removal of the public rights to water through changes to water licenses as discussed in my most recent blog comment. In the beginning, they proposed that all domestic use licenses (largely affecting rural populations' drinking and household water and garden watering) should be changed to "permitted use". We have also stopped this, or so they said on the blog when I asked in January. This would have removed all our legal rights to water use since we would no longer have a legal contract (the license) with the government for that use, but rather they would "permit" us to use the water. This is particularly important when you understand that rural residents are on the front lines of protecting our watersheds for our domestic use water from resource extraction (largely forestry) and other economic uses like water bottling and IPPs and so forth. We would no longer have been allowed to comment before the various powers that be if we did not hold licenses. And this was all being done for "administrative efficiency" we were told, ie fewer licenses to collect fees on and maintain databases of. The 26,000 Domestic Use licenses are 52% of all licenses issued and account for a teeny, tiny portion of all water allotted. The sneaky bastards! I put nothing past them.
And here is a pdf of the power point presentation I did for the BC Food Systems Network last fall and a couple of times in the area where I live for local audiences.
I can send you the power point which is much easier to read as it in color, if you have power point software to view it. We made this black and white version so it would be smaller and easier for folks to download.
WAM Presentation BCFSN Sept 2010
http://www.box.net/shared/z2gj204jfo
Note particularly the slide that shows the chart from Eau Canada with approaches/vocabulary used in the two different takes on water: commons or commodity.
Comments on the blog had stated the commons side of the debate and the government is doing the commodity side full out.
I have learned a lot since I wrote this but my main issues still stand:
1) Public ownership of water, at that time the government website said "the government owns all the water" but we have pounded into their heads they are just the manager of water which is a public trust, now it must be written into the legislation.
2) Lack of funding for staff and water SUPPLY data collection and worse yet lack of useful water supply data especially related to the risks to that supply in any form.
On this point I note that the government held a Water Science Strategy meeting in August of 2010 and still haven't published the report on their water science strategy (WSS) which the living water smart website still says will be published in Dec 2010. I asked about this on the blog in January and was told it would be published "soon". I am beginning to suspect they are withholding it until after this second round of comment is complete. Of course without this report it's impossible to know the details of their guidelines plans and how they are going to be making water allocation decisions "based on science" as they told us in those workshops. In the workshop I was in, someone yelled, "Who's science!"
They have completely broken this whole data collection and interpretation part away from the rest of the public comment structure. I'm sure many enviro scientists will tear their strategy apart if they ever get around to making it public.
3) Watershed Protection from resource extraction activities
There are NO Details how they will integrate water protection "across jurisdictions" as they so cutely put it. It is of the upmost importance that our watersheds be restored and protected. This is the real way to conserve water as you will see in my slide presentation below. The fact that resource extraction activities are not even covered by the Water Act is a little know fact that must be shared far and wide. This act is about public use of water not about resource extraction use.
4) Removal of the public rights to water through changes to water licenses as discussed in my most recent blog comment. In the beginning, they proposed that all domestic use licenses (largely affecting rural populations' drinking and household water and garden watering) should be changed to "permitted use". We have also stopped this, or so they said on the blog when I asked in January. This would have removed all our legal rights to water use since we would no longer have a legal contract (the license) with the government for that use, but rather they would "permit" us to use the water. This is particularly important when you understand that rural residents are on the front lines of protecting our watersheds for our domestic use water from resource extraction (largely forestry) and other economic uses like water bottling and IPPs and so forth. We would no longer have been allowed to comment before the various powers that be if we did not hold licenses. And this was all being done for "administrative efficiency" we were told, ie fewer licenses to collect fees on and maintain databases of. The 26,000 Domestic Use licenses are 52% of all licenses issued and account for a teeny, tiny portion of all water allotted. The sneaky bastards! I put nothing past them.
And here is a pdf of the power point presentation I did for the BC Food Systems Network last fall and a couple of times in the area where I live for local audiences.
I can send you the power point which is much easier to read as it in color, if you have power point software to view it. We made this black and white version so it would be smaller and easier for folks to download.
WAM Presentation BCFSN Sept 2010
http://www.box.net/shared/z2gj204jfo
Note particularly the slide that shows the chart from Eau Canada with approaches/vocabulary used in the two different takes on water: commons or commodity.
Comments on the blog had stated the commons side of the debate and the government is doing the commodity side full out.
(Nelle_Maxey_submission.pdf)