Public hearing, minutes, adjourned.
Marine ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning, fellow directors, staff, my name is Tim McGonagall for those who don't know me.
I'm chairing today's community the whole meeting and welcome you to today's session.
Also, I want to acknowledge that today is National Ice Cream Sunday Day.
So afterwards we'll be going for Peanut Buster Parfays.
And it's also National Blueberry Day.
Well, we'll look at the definition whether a Peanut Buster Parfay is a Sunday or not.
It's in a Sunday Cup.
With that, awesome.
And there are blueberries for National Blueberry Day, according to Director Markman.
So thank you for that.
But I'd like to acknowledge that the CBRD is on the Unceded Territory of the Quatson, Malahat, Subbasit,
Halt, Penalicate, Snaminess, Layaxon, Packwitchon, Ditty Dot and Patchy Dot Nations.
Whose people have watched gently here for thousands of years with thanks.
With that, Miss Boyd.
Thank you chair.
I've been advised that we do have a new business closed item.
It's both be closed under Community Charter E, Acquisition Disposition of Land and Improvements,
NG, Litigation or Potential Litigation.
And that the amendment, if everyone's okay.
Consensus with that, that the agenda be approved as amended.
To additional moved seconded, all in favor.
Opposed if any, those two items will be added to closed.
With that moving on, Miss Boyd.
Thank you chair.
We have the adoption of the minutes of the Committee of Home Meeting of June 10th, 2026.
Be adopted.
Do you have time to peruse those Director Markman?
Any errors or omissions?
Seeing none, you're going to move them, aren't you?
Thank you, move by Director Markman, second by Director Beast and all in favor.
Opposed if any?
That motion carries. Thank you.
Next item?
There it will be no new business arising from the minutes.
We move to public input period.
So if anyone would like to have some public input, we're here to listen to your points.
If you could state your name and please be respectful according to the public input portion that has been published on the agenda.
Good morning chair.
I need to.
My name is Kim Bernardo.
I'm from Area B.
Shaweliken, Shonigan Lake.
Delighted to be here with the topic of drinking water and watershed protection.
I'd like to share a bit about our unique situation in Area B, which is on today's agenda item 8.2.
Item 8.3 and so on.
I'll begin with my conclusion.
It's all about finding the balance.
So our lake has different personalities.
It's a recreational oasis.
It's a drinking water reservoir.
And it's a secret third thing when emergencies require firefighting in the area.
Everyone gets off the lake to make room for the water bombers to come in.
And scoop gazilines of gallons.
So what I hope that the board will consider, the committee, the whole will consider today is those personalities of our lake, our drinking water source.
I also revisited some of the correspondence to the residents of the Shonigan Lake North water system from retired professional.
Brian Denison.
So he wrote to us and he said that in and planning treatment solutions for how best to meet V.H.
He has water quality requirements.
The Shonigan Lake source presents some additional challenges for a number of historical reasons.
Human activities in an unprotected watershed area.
Encroachment of development and influence of septic systems combined with natural aging of Shonigan Lake, result in elevated organic content and seasonal algae blooms.
So those are just some of the challenges to consider.
And we hold in both hands drinking water and watershed protection.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Anyone else for public input?
Welcome.
Mr. Chair, if I may interrupt, Director Wilson here.
Sir.
Yes, I have mentioned that to our parliamentarian.
Thank you.
Sorry for the interruption.
That's quite all right, Mr. Chair. Good morning and good morning to your fellow directors.
My name is Susan Kaufman and I'm from Selam.
I would just like to acknowledge the very comprehensive report on climate change that staff and the consultants have put forward.
I think we're realizing as residents of the valley, the effects of climate change that we're seeing already.
A very dry May this year.
June is typically a wet month for us and it was dry as well.
We really looking forward to hearing the reports that are going to be presented today.
And I'd also like to acknowledge the very important work of our community groups such as the Shonigan Basin Society.
I think the value for the dollar that we get from very important historical knowledge by people who have lived here for decades.
And that knowledge is based in science.
So I really hope that their important work is supported along with the other groups.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
And I fail to acknowledge we have two directors online joining us, Director Deck and Director Wilson.
I'll watch for your hands looking for more public input.
Ma'am.
Thank you.
Chair and Board of Directors.
My name is Joyce Benson.
I live in North Calchino and we own property in the Calchino area as well.
And I would like to, I'm not sure what number it is, but it's to do with the watershed and the funding for water.
The situation and North Calchino says included.
And I just would like to make reference to be honest.
I'm not quite as prepared as I would like to be.
I learned about this very late last night and I've had a hectic morning.
So apologize.
So I would like to propose that there is a technology that is available that is very conducive effective to cleaning up our waterways.
I'll just dive into it here.
Our Keiko technology, Keiko is K.I.K.O.
It's a patented technology and I have introduced it to North Calchino, Council and staff.
And with regards to quamachin Lake in particular, but there's many other troubled waterways we know on Vancouver Island and around the world.
Keiko technology is a patented technology that is also applicable for impaired waterways, lake, rivers, golf course, lagoons, etc.
The Keiko products are non-chemical.
And proven to remediate and restore impaired waterways of harmful algae blooms, filamentous cyanobacteria, invasive zebra muscles, invasive weeds such as Hydra and curly pond weed.
And a few Keiko case studies explain the successful results and I do have that information but not for here.
Why has Keiko technology been successful as opposed to the chemical?
Firms failures.
The answer is shown in the document.
In summary, Keiko pellets are made of basaltic lava and reprocessed in Japan in order to allow low hydrogen energy and mittens.
It gives the Keiko kilojoules that then activates beneficial microbes to perform the incapitals actual cleanup.
The empirical data has been repeated in many locations and includes sewage waste.
We have a utility board series problem, costly problem.
Includes sewage waste, retention ponds filled with phosphate, sludge, mining waste.
Why haven't chemical firms adopt similar practices?
One of the reasons is that chemicals generate an overabundance of energy that actually harm beneficial microbes and their mentality is to kill the microbes.
With powerful toxic chemicals such as copper sulfates, glycophate, sewage oxygen gas from nanobubbles.
This practice is old school, but a practice most municipalities are led to believe.
Modern cleanup technologies based on physics and understanding the action of beneficial microbes.
One wouldn't kill the bees would you.
So Keiko's bio energetic solution has proven.
Your time is up, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
If there are no more speakers, if we still have time, yes.
Thank you.
And the other speakers in the gallery wish to have input on today's agenda items.
Seeing none, how are we doing for time, Ms. Boyd?
We have three minutes left.
Last chance.
I think we know who you are. You don't have to introduce yourself again.
Thank you, Tim.
Okay. And so this is regarding item 8.5 and based on a discussion I've had this morning.
Observed emissions have ruled out SSP5-8.5 and the IPCC calls it unlikely.
Why recommend that scenario as the baseline for all long-term planning instead of the moderate SSP2-4.5?
Follow up.
We'll staff commit to pausing this for further review, cost.
What will the projections cost the community over the next 20 to 30 years?
And why endorse a planning baseline with financial considerations marked NA and no cost benefit analysis question mark pause?
This baseline underpins the local area plans you pause until after the election and what is lost by waiting to endorse it until then.
I did have a longer version, but that's my brief.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
We don't ask answer questions at the public input, but thank you for having them recorded on our video.
Seeing no more speakers, I believe we can move on, Ms. Boyd.
Thank you, Chair. We moved to delegations.
Thank you.
Welcome, sir.
There's a button at the microphone, if you want to push that.
Perfect.
Hi, my name is Jerry Diel. I'm 72 years old, and I'm born here in Duncan.
Okay.
Just kind of get a little less nervous here for a second.
We're all friends here, Mr. Deal.
I'm here to talk to a CVID about a proposal that I've been working on.
It's an indoor sports facility that I've been talking to north couch in about N plus.
Some people here at Neil and Mike Calil, tech.
What it is, I'll tell you exactly how it all started.
I have three grandkids and they play sports here in town.
And I'm born here and I play all my sports here.
My grandson plays out of an animal pirates.
So I said to my daughter one day, I said,
How come Smith is going to an animal all the time? Like 40s a week?
And I said, you and some other parents are driving on to.
And she says, well, that's where the practices are done.
So what do you mean the practices? Well, it's an indoor facility.
We don't have an indoor facility here in the valley.
So I went to take a look at this facility and it's funny. I film this guy.
And what it is, it's in the news.
And it's a family farm and he inherited it and it's a big barn.
And he made it into an indoor sports facility.
So I told her, ask, why can I come and talk to you?
Because I said, you know, I have this idea.
Well, not there. The guy's just a cool cool guy.
And it's a big, big, a barn.
And he's got a soccer baseball football.
And he says, that's a big sport.
And the news is pickleball. He said, the seniors are just filling it right up.
So anyway, so to make a long story short, so I'm just thinking about all this stuff.
And I have some friends, like tack has been a friend of mine for years.
So I've talked to tack and Mike.
And just some ideas of how we could do this.
And the idea that we come up with is,
get the public involved in, and do like a non-profit societies,
but we had thought about it when we talked about it.
And so I've talked, I've had some good meetings with North Couching.
And they're on board. I mean, they're quite supportive of this.
And I think there was some, I was supposed to show you some pictures of some of the stuff that I've been looking at.
But I've been working on this for a couple of years, too.
And it's, in my opinion, it's a great idea.
I'll just give you an example.
I was telling this lady here, I just went today.
My nine-year-old grandson, there was a wind up baseball.
A couple of weeks ago, they had, you know, the bouncy castles, everything all up at the park here.
So at the end of it, it was all over.
There was a whole day, and then we didn't have a car, and I said to my grandson,
I said, so what's going on now?
No, Miller.
He says, what do you mean?
I said, what are you going to do now? He says, well, I won't see my friends now until next year, Grandpa.
And I thought to myself, oh, I said, oh, I said, oh, so now you're just going to go home and sit and play on your phone?
Yeah.
And then I clicked and we had to wait a minute.
But anyways, so I don't know if she's okay, so I think,
what am I looking at here?
Okay.
Do you want to know what?
Okay, yeah, because I don't know it.
And the reason I'm here more than anything else you guys is because no one person can do this.
It'd be nice to get all of it, you know, some advice, some people that know what they're talking.
You know, because I honestly, I'm so passionate about this.
I'm retired.
You know, I worked for Peter Belcher in this town for over 30 years.
I know a lot of people, and I just think that we need this.
And the other facility that we have in this area is in Victoria.
So that's the two places that you know, we can go.
And I mean, we've got a lot of sports people from Lake couch and Sean again.
Ladies with me.
There's a lot of kids and not just kids.
I mean, even old guys like me can go out there and fool around once in a while, you know what I mean?
We'll take a check out there, but yeah, that really.
Well, I don't know, I see on Facebook.
He seems to be playing a lot of golf.
You know, yeah, I don't know.
Is that that charity worked that you're talking about?
Okay, I guess.
Yeah, I don't know if there's really much more that I can, you know, really bring up accepted.
I wanted to make the CVRD obviously aware of it.
Again, as I say, probably the most important thing is that no one person can do this by themselves.
But you get some, did any questions or something like that?
I can answer.
Thank you, Mr. Deol.
I think we can all follow along with the PowerPoint that you provided.
And if we have any further questions, we can reach out to our staff.
First of all, I want to thank you for your presentation and your interest in this.
I personally am not a pickleball player, but I have seen how.
Good that that is accepted within my age group.
Any questions from directors or, okay, I have?
Don't touch it.
Director Staples.
No, push it again.
It's on.
There you are.
All right.
Thank you so much for your presentation for coming here and also just for this idea.
I have a sports family as well.
And yeah, it was a lot dragging kids all over the place because of the limitations of what we have here.
I have one question I have is, what is the size of the place that I'm going to know?
All the one and I'm going to use born.
I don't have the measurements, but I can tell you it's two football fields.
But that is something that we would need here and dunk here.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was it a barn that existed that was renovated as that.
Yes, yes.
Yes.
And is it on ALR land?
That's another question that I have.
Do you know in the land?
Oh, I don't know the one.
Those are just questions I'm curious about.
Yeah.
You like how they overcame some of these things and some of the potentials that, you know,
or there's a lot of farmers who are shifting, you know, shifting at a farming, or farming differently,
or I who knows how many empty spaces we have.
I was a farmer in my previous life and I know the barn from the farm that I used to,
is that a storage facility.
Right.
So, you know, there's a lot of, yeah, potential.
I guess so I'm really excited about this.
Can I have a great idea when you, if you go and look at it, it's just...
Yeah, yeah, I definitely will.
But yeah, those are just some questions that I have because I'm just curious about,
that it just expands the possibilities of what could be done.
So, I will check it out.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Director Kelly.
Thanks, Chair.
Yeah.
I mean, when you came forward with this to me and mentioned it to me,
and I mean, this to me is, it's great.
It's exactly what we didn't college of value.
It's something that we, you know, at this table, I'm pretty sure everybody here would embrace
this.
You know, something like this would...
It gives the teams an advantage if they can have this facility because they can practice all year.
Yeah.
You know, I coached college in football for many years, and I coached lacrosse,
and I coached soft kid soccer, and all those sports.
And to have an indoor facility would have been so amazing.
You know, and it's absolutely bucketing down rain out there.
Absolutely.
Trying to, you know, run a practice in years.
You're so can wet and freezing cold and all that.
You know, I mean, it's just great to have a facility to go in.
And also, you mentioned earlier about the pickleball.
I mean, and this is the fastest growing sport in North America.
And you know, have professional pickleball leagues.
And, you know, it's growing exponentially every day.
And we've seen some without a North college.
And just regionally with some action from the pickleball crowd.
You know, these are the kinds of things that need to come in a groundswell from the community.
And I think, Jerry, that's what you're doing here.
You're, you're bringing it to something forward that, like I said,
everybody can get behind.
It's just, to me, it just makes sense.
And anything I can possibly do, or, you know, I'm here to help.
So, you know, thank you for being this forward.
And thank you for your presentation today and keep on it.
Yeah, thanks.
When you've been a big supporter and a big help, we talk quite a bit.
And I thank you so much, Roy.
And I'll also acknowledge, Director Acton has joined us online as well.
Director Man has your next.
Thanks, Jerry.
Thanks, Jerry, for that presentation.
I said, make a comment.
I've never seen you nervous before in your life.
I mean, it's not salesmen for belsave month after month, month after month.
A year after a year.
And you're going to be nervous to unsell the choir.
Thanks.
So instead of a car, he's going to sell us an indoor sports facility.
Everybody wants it.
Absolutely.
No.
We appreciate your presentation and taking your time to provide the information to us today.
I'm hoping that we can look at a possibility of at least a future discussion.
I have no motion on the floor, et cetera.
We don't make a decision during delegations.
But I'm sure that you have picked some interest within a few directors.
And we'll see where this goes in the future.
Thank you, kindly.
Thank you, guys, for letting me present us.
Appreciate it.
Ms. Boyd.
Thank you, chair.
We're moving on to report 8.1, 2026 Cowach and Valley Regional District Climate Projections.
Good morning.
All right.
So hi.
I'm Caitlin O'Connor, a senior environmental analyst in the Environmental Services Division.
I'm here to present some of the updated climate projections for the Cowach and Valley.
And my adopting these projections are important to support a safe and resilient communities in this time of change.
Hi, I'm so sorry.
So this work updates the CVR D's 2017 Climate Projections using the latest climate science.
Since 2017 advances in climate science have led to improved modeling approaches and a broader range of climate indicators.
And response the CVR D partnered with Peacock to develop updated regional climate projections using the latest generation of global climate models and improved downscaling methods.
This updated information provides a clear picture of how the climate and our region is expected to change and will support decisions that reduce future risk and build resilience.
Later in the presentation, I'll discuss what these projected changes can mean for the places and things we value most in the Cowach and region.
So to give you a sense of how projections are developed, we start with a global climate model, which is a computer model that simulates Earth's climate using lots of data and coding.
Climate models divide the Earth up into lots of smaller grid cells.
Within each of those grid cells, scientists apply mathematical equations that represent Earth's physical process, such as behaviors and interactions of the atmosphere, ocean, land and ice.
These models are tuned and tested against historical observations from weather stations to improve and validate their ability to simulate real climate.
The results is a sophisticated model that, while it is not a perfect representation of the real world, it is a good replication of the climate system.
So to understand climate change, the model needs information about how greenhouse gas emissions, the driver of climate change will change in the future.
Mission scenarios, known as the shared socioeconomic pathways or SSPs, are different scenarios for how we might emit in the future as a global society.
They range from low-emission futures where we transition to renewable energy sources immediately to a high-emission futures where we remain heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
These scenarios are input into the climate models to produce projections of the future climate based on different emission levels.
The model output projections for different climate variables like temperature or precipitation patterns.
It's important to keep in mind that these projections are not forecasts, they are what if scenarios for what the future could look like.
Once in admission scenarios chosen, the global climate model produces a low-resolution map of a grid cell.
From here, peak-kick downscales the map into a local scale projections for our region.
The maps throughout this presentation show that climate change impacts are not expected to be experienced uniformly across the couch and valley,
because the region includes a wide range of elevations, coastlines, and landscapes.
Some areas are projected to experience much larger changes than others.
In many cases, the greatest changes are projected in the Eastern-developed area region, where much of the population, infrastructure and agricultural activity are located.
The climate projections report consists of approximately 80 different climate indicators.
These indicators are available in four time periods.
The historical baseline from 1981 to 2010, and future projections for the 2030s, 2050s, and 2080s.
The analysis also includes two future emissions scenarios.
A moderate emission pathway and a high emission pathway. Looking at both scenarios helps us understand how climate conditions may evolve under different levels of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The data is also summarized for three subregions within the couch and valley. The west coast watershed, the water supply watershed and the developed watershed, making it easier for local governments, first nations, organizations and community partners to understand what climate change can mean.
For their specific area.
So, other data results come in box plots and tables that illustrate the regional averages for a given climate variable.
Uncertainty comes from any given variable, location and emissions scenario, as each climate model produces a different projection of future climate conditions.
This results in range of possible outcomes. Since no single model can be considered the correct one, the median or middle value of the model results is often used as the best gas.
The tenth and the 90th percentile range provides an indication of uncertainty across the model results. The larger the range, the more uncertainty in future projections.
The valley focus on the median values, the full range of projected changes should also be considered and particularly for critical decision making.
So, the climate projections for this region reinforce the findings of the 2017 assessment.
We have expected to become hotter and drier while winters spring and fall become warmer and water. These changes are expected to bring more frequent and prolonged heat events.
Warm or nights increase demand for cooling and greater pressure on water supplies during the summer months.
At the same time, precipitation patterns are projected to shift significantly.
More winter precipitation is expected to fall as rain rather than snow. Resulting is substantially less snowfall and a greater risk of heavy rainfall and flooding.
Overall, the region can expect a longer growing season fewer frost and ice days and more extreme weather related impacts associated with both summer drought and intense rainfall events.
So let's look more in depth into the temperature projection result. Each box plot shows the average daily temperature for each month of the year, meaning taking the average of the daytime high and with the night time low.
Looking at August, we see at the yellow box which represents the past climate where the median is roughly 16 degrees Celsius, then by the 2050s to be around 19 degrees and more than 22 by the 2080s.
This means the climate may many of us grew up with is no longer the climate we can expect in the future with hotter summers becoming the new normal.
Although three degrees may seem like a small change, it has major consequences because it shows the entire temperature distribution upward making extreme heat events much more common and much more intense.
So how hot do we expect it to get in the summer? This figure compares the historical summer heat conditions with projections for the 2050s and shows a substantial increase in extreme heat across the region.
The largest changes are projected in the developed area where the highest population concentrations will face the greatest exposures to heat related health risk.
The heat waves increasing to about 4 per year by the 2050s and about 6 per year by the 2080s.
Heat waves are expected to last longer and become more intense with the hottest day of the year warming up approximately 3 degrees by the 2050s and 6 degrees by the 2080s.
While annual precipitation is projected to increase slightly overall, the seasonal pattern becomes much more pronounced.
With wetter fall, winter and spring seasons and summers that are about 15% drier.
At the same time, snow falls expected to decline significantly by roughly 60% by the 2050s, which reduces the natural snowpack storage.
By the 2050s, the region's heaviest rainfall events are projected to become significantly more intense with both one day and five day rainfall extremes increasing about 15%.
Rain falling during the wet days is projected to increase approximately 30%.
Meaning a larger share of the annual precipitation will come from intense storm events.
So this figure is a new one for the updated report.
It shows how the frequency of warm season droughts may change across the region.
While projections suggest only modest changes overall, the developed area could experience drought conditions much more often.
With events that historically occurred once every 10 years, potentially occurring every 4 to 6 years.
Although there is uncertainty in these drought metrics, they align with higher confidence projections showing hotter summers and less summer rainfall.
Indicating that drought and dry conditions are likely to become more common, particularly in the eastern part of the region.
This next section highlights some of the key climate risk the couch in region could face in the coming decades and why planning ahead is important.
Responding to these challenges will require using climate projections and decision making and continuing to build on the strong partnerships that already exist across the region.
It will also be important to ensure that adaptation efforts are inclusive, support indigenous leadership and knowledge and consider the needs of most vulnerable to the climate impacts.
Water Sheds are one of the region's most important natural asset providing water habitat and climate resilience.
Climate change is affecting watershed health through drought, warming temperatures, wildfire and more extreme rainfall.
The fish die off in the couch in river in 2023 highlights the real consequences these changes can have when environmental thresholds are exceeded.
The couch in region relies on a mix of groundwater and surface water sources, but population growth and increasing demand are putting pressures on supplies that are already constrained in some areas.
Climate change is expected to make these challenges worse through hot or dry or summers and increase drought water quality concerns in the potential for salt water intrusion.
Building long-term water resilience will require continued investments in conservation, watershed stewardship, monitoring and sustainable water shed management.
When we talk about climate impacts, it's important to remember that some members of our community are more vulnerable than others.
Older adults, people living alone, those with chronic health conditions and people with insecure housing, can face greater risk during events like extreme heat and poor air quality.
The 2021 heat dome showed how quickly extreme heat can become a serious public health emergency, investing in cooling centers, clean air strategies, emergency preparedness and a strong social network can help reduce these impacts and improve community resilience.
Climate change is expected to place increasing pressures on the infrastructure system that support our communities including transportation networks, buildings and water services.
More intense rainfall can overwhelm storm water systems causing flooding, sewer backups, power outages, while lower summer water levels may affect water and wastewater treatment and increase heat and increase heat will drive greater demand for cooling and homes and buildings.
Together with wildfire and flooding risks that can disrupt transportation routes and isolate communities.
These impacts highlight the need for resilient infrastructure design and long-term planning based on future climate conditions.
Agriculture is a vital part of the couch and regions identity, economy and food security with more than 700 farms with.
The strong tradition of food, cultivation and stewardship. Climate change presents both opportunities and challenges including longer growing season and warmer temperatures, but also increased risk from drought, water shortages, heat stress, pest flooding and impacts of culturally important food systems.
Building resilience will require investments in water conservation, soil health, climate-adapted farming practices and ecosystem restoration to local food production and food security into our future.
Last, couch and parks, trails, lakes and tourism attractions are some of the region's greatest assets, while warmer temperatures may extend the recreation season and increased visitation.
We're also likely to see more disruptions from wildfire, snow, low water levels flooding and infrastructure damage.
Recent examples such as the couch and river fishing closure and atmospheric river impacts show how climate change is already affecting recreational opportunities.
Investing and resilient infrastructure and protecting natural ecosystems will help sustain these benefits into the future.
This assessment shows that climate change is not a future issue.
It's already affecting communities infrastructure, ecosystems and water resources across the region.
By using the latest climate projections and planning and decision making, we can better prepare for future conditions, reduce risks, and make stronger long-term investments.
Ultimately, adaptation is about protecting community well-being, supporting economic resilience and ensuring that the couch and valley region remains a healthy and place for our future generations.
Hi, sub-guys.
Before I go to questions, I'm going to give you a second.
Hi, great. I can't talk that long without taking a drink.
Great presentation. I appreciate that, Miss O'Connor. Very wholesome.
We will turn to our directors when you are ready. I have director Justice first.
Yeah, thank you. I'll reiterate. It was great presentation and a very interesting report as well.
I guess I understand that the report clarifies and adds some detail flushes out the 2017 projections.
But it also be interested in knowing what if anything is specifically changed from the 2017 climate projections up to the 26 ones, based in this new model and the emissions assumptions.
Are there any that are significantly different than the 2017 and is there any examples where either policies or design standards or adaptive practices would will change because of these new projections?
To the chair to the director. Nothing is substantially different.
However, every small changes do make some different design impacts. So we haven't gone and looked into those directly.
It's a bit more of like as we keep going as the as these new hopefully these adopted projections are taken and we do more risk assessments or if we're wanting to do any new infrastructure builds or prioritizing what we would like to do.
These will just help make sure that we are implementing those measures correctly and more accurately.
Thank you. Mr. Chair, could I have a second question?
Absolutely professor.
I'll take the pressure off you. This one is for staff in general. You don't need to answer this one necessarily.
So just to staff generally my understanding is that technical reports that present scientific or factual information are generally received for information as opposed to being endorsed.
For example, I wouldn't expect sort of water quality data to be endorsed or audit report or something like that.
So what distinguishes these climate projections from other technical reports that require the board to endorse as opposed to just receive information.
I'll turn to Mr. Moore.
If through the the charity director justice, thank you for the question.
The purpose of these projections is to have a common baseline that we can use for planning.
So we just want to, you know, any kind of projections, they're not 100% accurate.
There any model or we're telling you their models are going to be wrong.
What we want to do is ensure that we're all working from the same baseline.
For example, if emergency management was doing some disaster mitigation planning.
We just want them to be aware that okay, these are the projections that what we understand the baseline is going to be.
So we'll plan for those.
And then use services if we're looking at water availability and long-term planning.
We're using the same baseline information to support that.
So that that's why we're asking for the the endorsement that these be adopted as what we're going to use as an organization.
And they're consistent the same on some low models the same process as being used by other jurisdictions across the islands.
We've got that consistency as well.
Thank you.
Thank you for that. If you have another one, you can put your mic back on.
I'm going to go online to director Wilson.
Yeah, thank you Mr. Jack.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes, sounds good.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Conner.
And there's the third what Jeff said there.
If I wrote it down correctly, any climate projections like going to be wrong.
So we just need to establish a baseline which we need to endorse.
Can you with the data that you've got and it's going to pull up the report here again.
The time period season is an end, historical reference period 1981 to 2010.
That's fairly recent and given that the historical data previous to that is probably very limited.
Has anyone used what data we have?
We have to try and model or project what we are actually seeing now. If that's, do you understand what I'm trying to get to? What are we used from way back to see? Okay, this is what we've projected to be in 2020. What are we actually seeing? How has it been validated?
So, to the chair, through the chair to the director, the, I'm still trying to figure out what you're asking and I believe.
Okay, let me give you an example, if I can't hear. Some of the modeling systems that we used in my career, the theoretical result, was then compared to an actual practical result.
So, that the actual program and its calculations were validated. How have these been validated?
Yes, so how, how they've been validated is that they are consistently updated, is how I would do it the exact how they actually validated is partly looking back and seeing how it is.
When they are each iteration and why it's important to keep updating these results is because they keep looking at what they projected, what they've seen.
They also keep looking at what does all of the scenarios actually mean. So, what does a low-emission scenario actually impact it, what does a high-emission scenario impact the world.
Because every year we are actually receiving more and more data and it is being able to see how all of these actual interactions or climate change highs and lows are impacting for a day-to-day.
And so that's kind of what how it also just keeps on proving its that iteration process.
Good, and yeah, a full lot of please Mr. Chair, if I could.
Sure.
Yeah, and please don't get me wrong. There are things which are happening obviously. I don't deny that one little bit.
But for instance, one of the things that was referenced to us now was the 2017 projections.
Has any comparison been made to the projections for 2017, which were average who's done previous 2017 to the actuality of 2017.
So there's the validation again. This is what we think will happen in 2017 and this is what actually happened in 2017. Has there been any comparison there.
Through the chair to the director.
The 2017 projections would also be looking at what 2050 and what 2080 are looking at.
So it's not something that we can validate how the 2017 went because we're not validating on a very short-term scale,
or well, we're not comparing the short-term scale of what was happening in 2017.
Like these projections aren't saying what's happening in 2022.
It's saying this is what we're thinking is happening or potentially going to happen in 2050 and 2080.
And so these are the things that we need to consider when we are building some long-term investments,
or when we're looking at how we want to plan in the future.
Mr. Wilson, I'll let Mr. Moore answer as well.
Thanks to the chair to director Wilson and thanks Mr. Conner for the explanation.
Just to clarify these projections, we say they're for the 2050s and the 2080s.
But we're actually looking at 30-year periods because you need to look at a long-term average to see the longer-term trends,
as opposed to the year to year and day to day variability that we're always getting.
So the way the modeling is set up is they look at the 30-year period.
So the 2050 is at 2040 to 2069 and then 2070 through to the end of the century.
The modeling also they run the models and they can look at what happened in the past.
So the past figures that are being given there have been generated through these models and those can be compared to the historical data.
But we're only looking back as far as the 2080s or sorry as the 1980s as the baseline, that 30-year period in part,
because there isn't really reliable climate data on all these variables going back far enough to drive the models a lot farther than that.
And that's generally the accepted practice the way within meteorology that the experts always look at these 30-year periods.
Rolling baseline, so right now we're looking at one 30-year period once we move past 20-30, then they'll have enough data to sort of shift the baseline over.
Okay.
All right, thank you very much.
Thank you for that.
I'm going to go to Director Abbott next.
Thank you, Chair.
And thank you, Mr. Conner.
That was a very thorough report and I appreciate you taking time to explain it much more fully for people that aren't scientists such as yourself.
There's obviously there's an appeal that we work regionally and that we work with our neighboring jurisdictions and first nations.
Is there a similar, do the report authors also look for partnership collaboration opportunities with our neighboring jurisdictions and and couch and tribes to see whether there are economies in these kind of reports staying current.
We work with our partners because it is a regional impact. In fact, you've kind of portrayed an arm again kind of scenario to the layperson.
So I don't know if that's if you can help me on that.
Yeah, through the chair to the director.
Hopefully if these are adopted we would be going to all of our regional partners and even community organizations to share these results.
With them as they also will want are probably interested in what's happening within the region because it's so down down scale to be really specific.
This is also a way for them to not have to find out these numbers as well.
So a way to save resources region wide for others and our partners.
And so yes, I would I would love to. I look hopefully look forward to doing that this fall.
Absolutely everyone else is it's more of a commentary about the elephant in the room.
When will we address and it's a theme in today's reports when will we address forestry and 70% of the forest lands that are vastly impacting our water holding capacity and we can't survive on this island.
It's not an answer. Missal Connor needs to try to address, but I think as a as a community we need to advocate for a change in our forestry practices.
Thank you.
Appreciate that perspective. Thank you very much. I'm going to go online to director deck.
I was pressing the wrong microphone.
Thank you so much. Missal Connor that was troubling to say the least.
And I guess what my I was startled really by what I saw in terms of the precipitation overall.
Like we've known for years and years that the snow fall, the snow pillows on Heather Mount for example have got almost nothing.
So the forest hasn't been able to slowly release that that precipitation.
But what really frightened me was that even though the weather will be wetter and wilder you said that the annual precipitation will only slightly increase.
So again, I was kind of I guess I don't know where this work, you know, falls hoping from that that precipitation because it was wilder would and weather.
They've always told us that it would have sort of made up for the snow fall like the snow fall so that just blew me away.
And so I must echo the previous directors comments about the forest because that that will be our really only hope to capture and store water into the future seeing that there will only be slight increases in precipitation.
So I guess yeah that's all I need to say forestry needs to be changed completely.
Thank you. Thank you.
I don't think there was a question in there so you don't need to reply if you don't want to but if you wish to please do.
Yeah, so one thing I would just add because so precipitation is actually rain and snow together so precipitation doesn't just mean rain.
So a lot of the snow fall that is no longer going to be snow is actually coming down as rain and so there is a slightly increase of precipitation overall.
It's just to like look at is that now it's not going to be like stored in the mountains and then once it gets warm slowly comes down it'll be very immediate of rain and falling.
So there's it's more of how is this water going to be held how like intense it might come down and then also just how much it is then already there it becomes summer and now we're dry.
So it's a very like that type of more of a system but I do just want to make the clarification that precipitation is rain and snow.
Thank you so much. I actually did kind of know that but I need to be reminded thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you moving to Director Kelly.
Thanks, Chair. Thanks, Mr. Connor for the presentation.
It's well fleshed out and it was very interesting reading.
You know, you just led basically into what I'm going to make my comment about.
I don't really have a question but you know you just said that with more rain in the fall and winter they'll be less snow.
To me this speaks to what's in our agenda later on.
You know, the we're in like college and it's been I think it's been and not, you know, the works for over 20 years trying to get it raised up and I was doing to research online about the amount of water that would be stored by raising that we're up and it comes out to be 9.5 billion gallons of water.
And this is this is stuff.
Pardon?
I was whispering to another director but please carry on but just be mindful of the topic.
Yes.
So the thing is like this speaks to the fact that we need to raise we need to raise the we're it's something that you know to keep the college and river healthy.
We need to look at storing more water you know and saving it for the summer months.
I mean your report speaks to that perfectly in my opinion.
Thank you for stick handling around that appreciate it.
I don't know if you need to respond to that we're all quite aware of the situation there.
Director Staples your next please.
Thank you don't touch the mic look at that.
All right.
So thank you for the report.
I have a couple of things I guess one is a question and the other one is this an observation.
So a couple of observations one is that this is extraordinarily dire.
So there's that which we all can see.
I feel like we should be having a lot more of reaction than we are even looking at something like this.
And this is sort of that slow boil of climate change that you know we've been hearing about for decades now since I was a kid.
And which is decades and decades now.
That is now catching out to us and accelerating faster than was anticipated even ten years ago.
So that is a reality and people can roll their eyes or do whatever they like in response to that.
But that is the reality of the report that we're looking at and look to the interior right now.
I have friends and family who live there and the pictures of what it looks like right there right now are staggering.
You know red skies it is.
It does feel a pop a like a pop a like.
And and I think we need to acknowledge that because this is something that's impacting people we had a firearm out probability other day.
I don't even believe that it's oh yet this is going to continue to impact us and we don't even know.
You know what that will do once the that what the fires will do is they continue to burn and and that starts to also change the climate.
So you know on top of logging and other industry impacts across the province and and the country and.
And globally so these are very very real things.
I appreciate that we have this report but what I'm a question that I have is what is our.
What is our process for action and not to you know like as it as a community I realize that there are some things that we can do as a region.
I look to one of the things that I follow is a good news channel so that I can actually feel inspired and not feel overwhelmed by some of these things.
And there are a lot of amazing things happening in the world that are happening in communities and in region.
In cities, reforce Asian plans for one. Like, there's so many, so many things that can happen to lower the temperature that do help and that do help with rebuilding, you know, river banks. There are a lot of things that we can do, and I realize it's a lot. But in other places, communities have come together in order to address that. I can't remember the name of the nickel community that has the giant nickel in it.
So, when I was at SCM, I was talking to some people from the sidebarry, and I remember the story of the sidebarry, and I went back and looked at the documentary, it was barren. It was tried to get was a massive ecosystem failure, and they brought it back and they did it as a community. Everyone from, you know, the youngest kids to every service group, there are ways that we can do this. And that's the plan that I would hope to see come forward in the next year.
We can plan for what we know, but can we plan for what we can do. And because there are so many things that we can do and involving the community, just like to build an indoor store, it's a sports field.
Let's involve an engagement community in actually creating a healthy ecosystem for all of us to live in.
And the other piece of this that I'd like to see parallel to this, and I know that Dr. Shannon Waters presented to us a number of years ago, I think it was last term.
But on the social impacts, you've touched on it here, but the social impacts of climate change have been even better documented.
And they are also dire, in terms of domestic violence, in terms of mental health.
And so it would be good to see parallel to that from our chief medical health officer as well on the impacts of the hotter days and the changing climate.
Thank you.
So you can reiterate your question. I think it got lost in the.
Yeah, sorry.
I just saw the state of confusion, so I want to make sure you get your question out. We got your preamble.
Let's go right to the question.
Wait for the red.
The question is, is that something that the regional district is going to do in terms of planning on not just presenting and not just the, you know, not just the weird and the things that we can do, but what can we do is a community and leading that.
That's something that's being considered and also.
Bringing and engaging the chief medical health officer to ensure that we're updated on the social impacts that are happening.
Thank you.
So I'm going to answer this, but also let just hopefully add to it.
So with the 2017 projections, there did come out a climate implementation plan.
So we do have plans that do lay out the like watershed health and well being and all sorts of this basically the impacts that I had just gone through, didn't what we can do.
So, and then there's the climate adaptation and strategy as well.
That is part of the CVRDs and so.
If it would be great to update those, but that would be direction coming from the board to me to be able to do.
Mr. Moore, you wish to add.
Thanks.
Through the chair to the director, I think, Miss O'Connor, some summarized it pretty well.
The previous round of projections sort of started our climate out or climate work as a region.
We looked at a bunch of natural hazard risk assessments to understand what the risks were and then developed a climate adaptation strategy and that.
Was a regional partnership working very closely with municipalities with island health and a lot of community groups.
To come up with a strategy that really had actions from a whole bunch of different players realize it wasn't just things that CVRDs doing.
And as Caitlin indicated, I think it's a good time to be looking at our progress on that strategy and looking at should that be updated.
Are there new actions given this new information?
Things that have changed in the years since that strategy was developed.
So that will be part of our work plan that we'll be putting forward is to look at that.
Thank you. Just turn your mic off if you would.
Thank you. Well, no, I'm just I'm doing some housekeeping and while I'm doing that, if those in the audience can mute their phones.
I would appreciate that.
From here on, it'll be a $50 fine. Should I hear anymore?
Director Morrison.
Thank you, Chair. Thanks for the report.
This has been long anticipated.
I remember when the 2017 report came out, how much there was for directors to learn.
Even just a simple concept of what is climate and what is weather.
A lot of people have difficulty grasping that.
I do want to ask about salt water intrusion, but I'm really.
I have concerns about the timing of this.
The endorse versus receive as far as information goes.
And I will have a follow up.
But I'm wanting to know how this is going to be used.
The previous speaker just went like, what are we going to do?
And think about the fact that our neighbors to the south of just basically abandoned alternative energy.
Programs and our burden as much fossil fuels as they possibly can.
And that's probably going to happen for a couple of three more years.
So I want us to do what we can.
But firstly, I want to understand the process of how this report,
if it's received as information or endorsed as recommended.
How that is going to wield its way into corporate strategic planning for the next board.
If I've just heard Mr. Moore say that we want our emergency management folks to be aware of the information contained in here.
So being aware of what's in the report is a heck of a lot different than our professional staff sharing their advice and recommendations in reports based on this.
And I assume that would happen if it was endorsed.
So and and are we maybe over our skis a little bit here endorsing this report three months before a new board there?
So how is this going to be used in the next few years ahead within the organization?
And it's it's role it'll play for us around most table.
I'll turn to Mr. Moore.
Thank you through the chair to direct a Morrison.
To put it in context, what we're receiving with these climate projections is a vast amount of data.
Looking at all these different permutations and combinations.
And as you pointed out, as Mr. Conner stated, there's a lot of uncertainty associated with these.
Part of that is a scientific uncertainty around the models and we address that by using a whole ensemble of models and looking for the common themes and the other piece is around the different shared socioeconomic pathways.
So it's very challenging to be able to, you know, we don't have a crystal ball to see what the future is going to be like and things can change from year to year.
We heard in the public input that there's some in promising indications that we might be veering away from the the 8.5 scenario.
These package of projections that we're asking to be endorsed includes all those possibilities.
So then what happens is when there's long term planning that needs to understand what the future climate is we looked at.
What's the nature of what we're trying to work with and how important it is it, so which assumption should we use.
So if we're looking at critical infrastructure, you know, waste water treatment plants.
We want to be fairly cautious and conservative with planning for a fairly serious worst case scenario.
There might be other instances where the consequences aren't as severe, so it would make sense to use a more optimistic scenario or maybe use the mid range.
Those best guesses that Miss O'Connor had up there rather than using the the more extreme scenarios.
We did use the 2017 projections for our hazard assessments, so when we did the updated flood mapping around the region.
We use these projections to have an understanding about what precipitation would be looking like in the future so that we could use that as the baseline.
That's what we're envisioning, so it's mainly the data and the availability of the data and referring to this is the accepted common data source for the region going forward rather than any specific policy implications stemming from the data.
Yeah, and thank you for that and it brings forward a real life and practical conundrum for us and that we're accepting this package of data as accurate as it is on behalf of the next folks that will be sitting around this board and we've all seen how the reports come forward.
Basically, saying on the basis of the accepted data that you have before that the board has endorsed, these are the data data implications and recommendations that come forward.
I think that that's looking at a former director in the room who warn me about being so far out in front of our own troops that they must take you for the enemy.
So, practically speaking when we talk about trees and everybody looks at let's talk about forestry, absolutely there's issue around right and fall retention and the likes on the vast forest lands around here, but when I look in communities and see people cutting down mature trees in residential neighborhoods because they don't like the leaf litter that falls in fall.
We've got a serious issue that people are communities aren't, I would say, engaged to the same extent that we are with reports like this.
I'm also going to say that I want to look at as a pocket lift as this may seem.
I think there's some good news in this as well in that I think we will have more people come to this community I think that there's a bright future for the couch and valley.
I think we're already seeing environmental tourism and migration to this area so we've got the opportunity to plan for that.
There's some good news in this as well, but again I'm going to warn that we should perhaps be cautious about what we endorse or receive now because it's going to be different people sit around this table in very few months.
So I guess there wasn't a question in there. Oh yeah, let me ask, do we have fears about saltwater intrusion in the communities now?
I'm going to let Jeff answer that question.
Thanks through the chair to direct a margin. That's usually associated with sea level rise which isn't included specifically in this report and that's because of the nature of the climate models and the data that we have.
These projections don't do a very good job of predicting the future sea level rise.
In terms of saltwater intrusion, we are seeing indications that that could be a threat in some areas particularly if we look at fetus and some of the other golf islands.
And there's been quite a bit of work that has been done on Gabriel looking at a better understanding of the aquifers there.
So we're looking at that kind of work to understand those risks as well.
And just so you know, I see you people online with your hands up again, but as second time speakers, I'm going to go to my first time list first, Director Nicholson.
This has been an interesting conversation. I'd like to address the sort of two trees of thought happening here, and I'd like to talk first about this issue of this being something that we have to endorse.
I think that's absolutely not what we should be doing.
This is a very technical report, a lot of science is based on modeling and there it is, it's your best, it's your best technical information at the time.
So I don't, you know, we do not have the capacity to understand whether this is something we should endorse or not endorse because we based on data.
So it really is an operational issue and I think we should accept it for information.
I think this kind of information, we should be aware that this is the kind of thing that the CVRD does every so many years.
And I guess my question is how often do we do this updating?
Through the chair to the director.
The 2017 was the first one and so it's been about nine years.
And so we do we sort of do it every ten years or sort of and then maybe more often if we're getting worried.
Mr. Moore.
Through the chair to Director Nicholson, one of the big reasons was because we're onto the next generation of global climate models now.
So the IPCC does an update to their climate models every five to ten years. It's not always a fixed schedule.
So then once there's new information available, and then the PKK specific climate impacts consortium has the opportunity to do their downscaling and take those really, really coarse data and make it specific.
So a lot of it has to do with when there's new data that are available.
And so is it is it true that we are things are coming out as being worse than we anticipated as we move forward?
Through the chair to Director Nicholson, the general trends in the data are pretty similar.
It's the same message as we had from the previous projections that we're going to see warmer and wetterwinter's hotter drier summers, more intense rainfall events.
That hasn't changed. It's hard to say if the projections have really changed all that much, especially as you move into the future because of the range of uncertainty associated with the models.
So they're basically it might look like some indicators are a little higher, but it's probably not all that different from the previous ones.
The other thing that's come with these these new projections is there's been a number of new indicators developed. So this this report looks more specifically at snowpack, which the previous one didn't and they've got a number of additional measures for drought and for heat waves and just different ways of looking at the data that are presented here.
Can I ask another few questions?
A few. Not a few. I'll give you one more and then you can put yourself back on that list.
So I think that when we had that extreme heat wave where the system stalled that whole idea of how the weather systems are changing and that kind of stalling thing.
There's increased do we have better understanding now of how that's being affected by climate change?
And is that being built into these models? Is that with a new new model stuff is all about?
Through the chair to director Nepkelson.
The the I'm not as familiar with the specific details of what the models are measuring.
Part of it is a better understanding of new ways of of looking at the data.
Climate projections are never going to be able to project things like those heat domes those you know highly specific one time events are.
Next to impossible to predict just because of the uncertainty of climate system so what we're really.
All we're able to say is you know the average is looking at at the long term are going to be you know we're going to see generally higher temperatures.
But we can't say in any one year that that summer is going to be hotter than others.
But what we can say is that the extremes are getting extreme and they're happening.
Where we didn't ever expect to have a heat dome like that.
So I think we've got a series problem that we need to start really understanding how the board needs to step up and address that.
And yes it's important that the new board hears this kind of information right away.
But it's really important that this document get out in the community and be used right away.
So I do not think we should hold it up by questioning whether we should endorse it or not.
Of course it should be out there communities already paid for it.
Let's let's use the best available science and make sure everyone knows it's there.
So I really I feel like this is that question of endorsing or not is is something that we should think about because it's like.
I just would not ever want the board to be holding up or sitting on good technical information the community has paid for right.
So that's my point.
Thank you and if you have more I'll come back but don't put it on yet.
I'm going to go to the first time speaker director.
Thank you chair and thank you as others for the report.
I think Bob Dylan had it right when he said times are changing.
And I can speak to it specifically from neighboring farmer who when I moved.
She said oh when do you I said when do you plant your gardens he says why plant it when the snow's on the hill comes off the hill.
When you see snow snow you can plant your garden and typically that was a third week of May.
Well this year there's snow snow on the hill at all.
And so these things that generally shouldn't be where in place she always knew and the farmer before knew that too.
Those markers aren't there for the farmers anymore.
And so you know to say that things are changing is understatement for farming because even the impact of you know wetter winters you know we struggle in my area with getting the fields dry.
So that we can plant and having wetter winters mean that those little seals are flooded.
And yet you know dry or summers mean that we can't have we can't grow if we don't have enough water over the summer to feed our animals or grow our crops.
So you know farming is going to really struggle in the future.
So but with all that I'm interested in the concept of you know you go to basically two thirty year periods and you stop or sort of a rolling you move on to the next one.
And I think the first nations about seven generations and I think about my grandkids.
So I think that's going to be able 60 years old when this next.
When they when we're two, when we're the second second.
Thirty year period out why don't we look beyond that.
Why don't we provide information that I have a second question after.
Through the chair to the director we just given the already the amount of uncertainty that does happen between twenty fifty and twenty eighty going beyond.
It just becomes more and more uncertain.
And so trying to play in for something like that is really hard.
You can see the progression or maybe how the lines are going if you wanted to.
But also there's major things that could happen in a hundred years of are just global environment that can have major impacts as well.
And if you put sorry now we'll put you on the spot on that one.
I was just going to ask if you if you were putting your.
Crystal ball front of you what would you predict but that's that's okay.
I think the second thing is trying to put this into I think you tried and report to put it into context of.
The couch and valley versus other parts of the island.
And so you know how and because I'm trying to understand sort of the.
The bank where island impact and so do you see things as being very similarly to what we're projecting across the island.
And then compare the island to what is projected across the province and just trying to get us what's our relative positioning and what's going to be happening.
Is that in terms of I think letter.
Dryer hotter.
Through the chair to the director.
I would say I've been really really focused on just our tiny area and just given the differences between the west coast and the east coast and all of the the small variables.
That make it big impact like just how the.
Developed Eastern side of the region is going to get substantially hotter than what we would expect on the west side.
And that's kind of the point of the down scaling so but in a general.
Over archaic like generally Canada is.
Increasing in temperature and the impact given the relatively to like ocean or mountains in their impacts of snow and river like it.
They're the same kind of ideas usually the similar but the impacts of it can change wildly based on where you are.
And I guess it might comment would just following up is the concept of this data needs to be out there.
People need to understand the programs and farming programs about for water storage.
That this needs to be happening sooner than later but.
Thank you for that.
I'm going to stay with my first time speakers before going to the second time list.
Dr. Manhouse.
Thank you Mr. Chen. Thank you.
And thank you Mr. Corner for that report.
I have two questions in a comment Mr. Chair.
Two quick comments questions.
Absolutely.
I understand these projections were done by the United Nations.
And that.
I don't know considered in in correct by the IPCC's is that correct.
The projections were done by P.K. Pacific Climate Institute of Canada.
Sorry, P.K.
And the social there are and I'm trying to remember the.
I'm not sorry. I'm struggling on what exactly they you and yes, just go.
I'm sorry.
Through the chair to Director Manhouse.
The.
Yeah, it's the IPCC.
Which which comes up with the global climate models that drive this.
So it's the.
Coupled into.
Integrated model comparison.
There's the ensemble of all the global climate models that we're looking at.
I'm not sure if you're referring to the shared social economic pathways that.
The assumption for the for a number of decades.
We've been on a pretty clear trajectory following the high emissions scenario.
There are some early indications that suggest we might be moving away from that.
That scenario, but it the projections do include five different scenarios.
At the global level and what the Pacific climate impacts.
Consortium did.
And they do for for much of Canada is take those projections and bring in the the more localized climate data to to down scale it and make it specific to our area for this particular report.
They've focused on as they have in a lot of places on the the two scenarios that are seen as being the most realistic.
So they that's the the SSP.
Five eight five, which is the results that are presented in the tables in the report along with the more moderate emissions scenario.
Which isn't we don't go into detail with that in the report, but we have all the data for that that model so whichever one is.
You know, a decisions on which model to use.
Can be made depending on on the use of the particular use and the implications of it.
Follow up almost to this report cost.
Through the through the chair to direct my house it was about forty four thousand dollars.
Just for this specific report about the twenty seven.
This update was was forty four thousand dollars not funding came through the LG cap.
And in my comment is I just can't endorse baseline that cannot be verified he is so many different models and stuff and so what what are we actually going up to the community for we're endorsing this baseline.
Which baseline are we actually endorsing I just can't for the endorsement of this report.
Thank you.
Mr. Friend or director for the first time speaker welcome.
Thanks sure. I thought it be the contrarian around the table, but maybe not.
I did a whole bunch of research on on this report when I read it specifically the six modeling the CMI peat.
A couple of model inter comparison project phase six that everything seems to be based on and there seems to be quite a bit of bias in these these models because they're always looking at the worst case scenario.
That's what it seems like so you've got cloud feedback that's not taken into account as much.
Regional extreme event efficiencies so I mean we're looking at these huge huge models that the IPCC has endorsed.
You know this report is dire as director staple said because it's intended to be dire it's looking at the absolute worst case scenario and I refuse to live in fear.
I absolutely refuse to live in fear now at the same time. I have no problem planning for mitigation efforts.
Obviously we're trying to reduce any sort of flooding impacts or anything like that.
We have zero snow cap this year. Well we had zero snow cap in 2015 as well.
And we've very little snow cap in 2001 all the way in 2007.
So there's these inputs that maybe aren't being taken into account that are that are regionally based.
Right and we're looking at this report that might affect every single policy and by-law going forward.
So I do agree with the comment you know why is this in front of us now.
Is it good information sure but we have to look at the inputs and how it's regionally driven.
So I have a real problem with that I have no interest in endorsing it.
I have interest in accepting it but I do really have a lot of quiet.
I got a full page of comments that I'm not going to go through the mulch here.
But it just have a huge problem with accepting this as almost another Bible that we have to follow.
So I zero interest.
I have no problem, you know, staff taking it and looking at, as Mr. Moore said, being very cautious and conservative when it comes to our infrastructure.
Absolutely. I mean, that should be direction anyway, but, you know, if we need to give that extra direction because of this report, great. I have no problem with that.
You know, we need to make sure that our systems are solid regarding, you know, regarding regardless of what potential emergency might come up in the future.
So, I had a question, but Director Mann has took it, but those are kind of my comments. I'm, I refuse to live in fear, but I have no problem planning for a potential in the future.
But it's what is that potential? You know, I mean, we spent $200 billion in carbon taxes, federally plus how much?
Perentially and locally, and has a climate change? No, it's kind of worse. So, what are we done? Like, what's the point? Let's just, it's natural. You know, climate change is natural.
You know, 99.96% of climate change is natural. The other point of zero, 4% is potentially human-caused. Well, we can't change it.
Like, let's so let's figure out ways to protect our people and protect our resources and our infrastructure. So, that's my soul box for today.
Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Going to go back online, Director Wilson, second time.
I'm, I'm certainly, whether the right data set has been used, whether the data set 8.5 or whatever it was, RCP 8.5 is no longer valid, whether it's been removed, all that stuff there.
And I'm not even going to go down there for the road of the timing of the late couch and where which is still being thought about.
And as Director, sorry, Bruce said, I refuse also to live in fear. Now, one of the things that came up just now is the mention of sea level rise.
This to me is probably one of the other major factors, but it's not considering not being considered in the models.
First question, are there any models which incorporate that into this, or can we see any models which says, by 2026, we would be a watch in sea water.
Are there any projections, has anybody modeled that? And if they're out, I'd like to see them come forward.
And can we answer that one first? Mr. Wilson, Jeff, would you like that? Mr. Moore, sorry.
Yeah, through the chair to Director Wilson.
Yes, there are models that have looked at sea level rise. Again, there's a lot of uncertainty associated with them in terms of the rate of melting of some of the Antarctic glaciers and the Arctic glaciers.
And we hear stories of Antarctic ice shelves breaking off, and stuff in this can have a sudden dramatic effect on it.
We look to the the provincial guidance, which has been to plan for a meter of sea level rise.
The question is when's that going to happen?
There are suggestions planned for that by the end of the century planned for by 2070.
So there are a lot of uncertainties. We're still waiting for for updates to the provincial guidance on what to plan for.
And we have, when we did our risk assessments for the region, we did look at the implications of several different scenarios of sea level rise up to two and a half meters of sea level rise.
Not putting a time period on that, but just is this a scenario that we would have to plan for.
What would be impacted to the region in terms of infrastructure that's located along coastlines and wells and salt water intrusion and things like that.
And here's my question, Mr. Chair.
There was mentioned about perhaps us or whoever being non-scientists.
Yeah, that's probably true, but we've got a fair amount of real world experience.
And we're pretty good at what we do otherwise we wouldn't be here.
So I cannot endorse this report.
I will take it as being presented for information and that's how it should be treated.
But endorsement.
No, sorry.
Thank you. I'm going to go back to Director Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Several of us now have raised this question of whether it's technical report like this.
This particular technical report, I guess, rather.
It should be received for information rather than endorsed.
A number of people have made some fairly strong statements about not being willing to endorse it.
Personally, I've been convinced by staff's response that endorsement is appropriate.
And so I would support the recommended motion if it was on the floor.
But first I'd like to know, what would be the practical implications of not endorsing the report,
as opposed to simply receiving it and directing staff to, I'm not even sure this would need direction,
but directing staff to use the most current climate science in planning.
I certainly agree with the Director Nicholson that this report should be out there being used.
And would one or the other and be endorsement or receiving for information,
have any practical implications for it being out there being used?
Through the chair to Director Justice, not endorsing that certainly wouldn't prevent the data being used.
We would hope that it would be used as the baseline.
The 2017 projections were endorsed as the baseline for us to use.
What we're trying to avoid is a situation where we make plans based on one set of numbers,
and then some other entity starts making plans based on different numbers.
We just want to come to a common understanding of what the science is saying is the best available predictions
for what the future conditions are going to be like.
And that gives us the common understanding to use that for planning.
So if it's not endorsed, we would still intend to make the data available.
One of the use cases is if we are hiring consultants to do some work on any kind of project,
if it's an infrastructure project and they come to us and want an understanding of how much rainfall
should we plan for in the future that this is accepted as how we're going to come up with those numbers.
We're not going to go online and pull data in from other sources, which may be just as valid.
But then we've got one group using one set of numbers.
Someone else is using a different set of numbers and we're just trying to avoid that kind of situation.
Thank you.
I'd like to make the recommended motion that we endorse the report.
Okay, we can get it on the floor, but we'll continue with our speakers list.
It was moved.
Is there a second here?
So it's moved and seconded the recommendation I will read it out.
That would be recommended to the board that the 2026 climate projections for the CBRDB endorsed and used as the baseline for long term climate adaptation planning
and support for long term regional resilience.
I do have some first time speakers who have just come on.
I'll go online to direct your act.
Thank you chair.
I have no problem with endorsing or receiving as information.
I guess.
And the key word here is adaptation to the resolution.
And I like the direction that director staples first initially, you know, what can we do.
We're not here to mitigate or you know, to decrease.
We're not talking about any of those things and we're not actually debating whether climate is changing or not.
Those are definitely we're seeing extremes and that's what we're talking about.
How do we live amongst those extremes and I guess I also.
I don't know if this is being portrayed, but what made me kind of want to jump in here is just to be weary of.
We're making forestry the enemy.
If we look at our region, it's so heavily dominated by forestry and and yes, the practices are.
Often or sometimes.
Shocking when we see it, but all of this land would wouldn't be.
I call it preserved or or farmed if it wasn't forestry land like what would our area look like if it didn't exist.
It would probably be developed.
There's very little if we looked at the lower mainland, how much of that is preserved.
And what would our areas look like so.
I I question that we we have forestry in in Shonian lake that gives us this get that gives us our way of life here.
We are surrounded by trees and most of it is forestry land.
We have the forestry companies such as mosaic who give money to our local organizations.
They they help the basis society pay their rent.
They they help they've helped.
Build our our pavilion in in the past community projects.
So I just be weary of that as said so.
Anyway, that's all I have to to say just a comment and thank you for the report and great discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you and and just to be fair ladies and gentlemen, we all have our points of view.
Whether it's on climate.
Whether it's on forestry or whether it's on economics and social drivers.
So if we can just please respect everyone's point of view as we move forward, we don't have to agree.
But we should get along.
Don't make me hit the gavel.
Mister chair might not getting along.
No, no, it's not you.
I'm getting some indicators in my left ear from the director upstairs.
No.
Seriously though, I do have a first time speaker.
Are you finished?
I don't mean to cut you off.
Yes, thank you for allowing me to talk from home.
Thank you very much.
Director Beast.
Thank you.
We've had numerous items.
Very important items come before us and we've quite often are caution not to light our hair on fire and get all excited about them.
And then this one comes up and it's like, no light your hair on fire.
So a little bit concerned there.
I'm I'm sure from what I've heard here that there's every indication that staff and directors everybody does already take climate considerations into pretty much every decision that's made.
Best practices are all based on climate mitigation.
This is this is current policy in everything we do.
I'm cautious about the unintended consequences when we incorporate additional and outside data into our bylaws.
We just had some really strong pushback on things because of unintended consequences.
And it also cognizant of the fact that we need to be mindful that every time we bring more legislation on board it ends up costing everybody more money.
So I'm very happy to receive this.
I'm cautious about endorsing it right now because while I think that we have to be aware I don't know if we have to be.
If this has to be the overriding policy.
I'm not sure if it's avoided that.
It's clearly as I wanted to but.
I just wonder if we need to go so far as to incorporate this into our policies.
Thank you for that.
I'm going to go back online director DACA second time.
Thank you chair.
I just want to say that.
I like to direct or thinly refuse to live in fear.
If that was the case I'd be in a perpetual state of a feudal position in you know some corner of my house.
But what I do choose to do is.
What what model of the Council of Canadians recommends and she says we have a moral obligation to hope.
And for me that means we also have a moral obligation to act.
And what what are we going to act on if not a document like this.
But points out to us where we need to act.
How we need to act.
What we need to mitigate.
I just think we need to move this forward in whatever way we can, endorse it or not. I think it's giving us a pathway and so I just think, you know, what do we go, we can't ignore it. We must act on it. Thank you.
Dr. Nicholson, please.
Thank you. I think after we've dealt with this emotion, I would like to make a motion about the issue of the board and taking action on climate change.
It's something that I think is, it is a real responsibility when you presented with a report like this.
It is something that we should be taking very seriously and building into our risk analyses.
And I know that the staff are doing a great job behind the scenes, keeping up with all this stuff.
But I do not think that it is taken into consideration enough when we make budgetary decisions, which is really the only way we can apart from advocacy to the province.
How we invest our taxpayer dollars in the services that we provide is the way that we can have the best impact on addressing real risks.
And I am in particular really concerned about emergency management and would be interested in seeing a report come forward before the next budget cycle about what can happen.
And what should happen to reduce the risks to vulnerable populations about climate change.
Heat, heat, in particular, I think.
So there are other things that we need to be paying attention to.
And I think that the dollars that we invest today and I know that everyone wants to keep your budget line items as low as possible.
But, you know, it's way cheaper to invest dollars today to prevent things than it is to recover from real problems down the line.
And I live in a lot, like, you know, I keep saying this. I live in the coaxial watershed. We have serious issues.
I mean, we're talking about, the farmers are talking about wanting to dam the river.
And can you imagine, we can't even get a weird, you know, raised at couch and lake and they think a solution is going to be to dam the river.
Well, that'll take like 50 years and I just, if we don't just do the small practical things now, invest in the small practical things we can do.
We're going to be in real trouble in 10, 20 years. So I would like to get back to that conversation after we deal with this motion.
Okay, we'll decide how to do that when we're finished with this one. Could be a notice of motion or something. I will talk to my parliamentarian after this concludes director man has your next.
Thank you, Mr. Chair again.
One simple question. What's the cost implication in this sort of long-term in endorsing this report? Since everything would be looked at.
Have you had Fendorist who will be, every department will look through this lens.
Mr. Moore.
Got through the chair to direct a man has given that these projections are not of that costly different from the currently endorsed 2017 projections, then I think any there wouldn't be additional cost implications.
Would come more from making decisions about necessary adaptation and those decisions would be the discussion of the board of what's necessary to adopt for this.
This is more about the baseline to be able to have the information to make those decisions down the road.
I'll leave it at that.
Director Morrison please.
Thank you chair.
I can't believe I'm going to have to vote against this resolution because I fully support having good data.
I think there's been a lot of good discussion around having this information in our toolbox for us and for staff to be able to use.
But as it's been shared about the unintended consequences and the like I think there's a far more rational patient path forward and would be good governance to to receive this information.
Now it's got to go through to the board before we it's officially endorsed or received.
But we have an opportunity to take the information and we've had this for a few days.
I wasn't able to read the full report to the extent that I wanted to read the full report.
So endorsing versus receiving I'd be fully comfortable with receiving this and I don't see why there would be any challenge with this as a received document coming back with staff to the next board saying okay the previous board took this in as information.
And here it is we would like to see it endorse that a future date.
I think that's a far more reasonable plotting methodical approach to doing this.
So as far as the motions on the floor I regrettably going to have to vote against it.
Dr. Segel.
Thank you chair.
I'll be supporting this recommendation. I just wanted to say I'm really grateful for staff for putting this together and bringing us such you know scientifically backed projections and for standing up here for as long as you have answering questions.
Thank you, Mr. Connor.
Yeah, this is data.
It's not policy.
This is information for our government to plan.
We are local government.
Our responsibility is to take care of the people that live here to make sure that they're able to get water out of their taps if we're in the middle of an extremely dry summer.
We already have some systems that have to truck in water.
Are we prepared if we have an earthquake and you know those trucks can't get to those water systems.
This is our responsibility to plan for these kinds of things.
Of course it's not necessarily always going to be the most catastrophic you know apocalyptic situation.
But I know that I plan in my own home for that and my you know esoteric world is like when I plan for the worse the worse doesn't happen.
This is protecting our infrastructure protecting the people here.
I agree I don't live in fear.
I plan and make sure that I'm prepared that's why I support this kind of work.
Through the local government.
I want to know that we're able to have facilities that have AC that can work if we have some kind of power issue.
Again, I'll come back to the earthquake.
What happens if we don't have power and heat dome at the same time?
This kind of information to know what extremes may come is crucial for emergency management.
Such an amazing team I hosted before I was elected.
I hosted a meeting with a nonprofit society to hear from emergency management to know what they're doing in the background constantly.
So that when something happens, there is they're all living amongst us.
There are all these volunteers and staff at the CV or D that are ready and you know look forward to being those helpers that we need within our community.
So this is just baseline data that we need to inform that planning so that we don't have to live in fear.
Which is why I'll be supporting it.
Thank you.
I have no other speakers so I'm going to take a turn.
I appreciate the diverse conversation and the diverse views brought forward by everyone.
I will not reference director Finley and Libbyten Fear because we all live in fear of something.
As a long time director, the 2017 projections were endorsed by the previous board, which was inherited the next year by the board that came in.
As not policy, but as information scientifically produced.
I see this as no different given that the numbers between 2017 and the projections that have been presented today are not that far out of line.
I look at it as a planning tool to move forward with smart growth or containment can be accommodated.
So with that I will be supporting it and I'm going to call the question.
All in favor.
Keep your hands up please.
And opposed.
I'm going to read them.
I have director Morrison.
Director Beaston.
Director Calio.
Director Manhass.
Director Finley.
Director Markman.
Online director Wilson.
A post.
And that motion fails.
Did you say it failed?
Let's try that again.
The opposition please.
Morrison.
Beaston.
Calio.
Manhass.
Finley.
Markman.
And Wilson.
Eight seven that motion passes.
Thank you for that.
With that topic being finished.
I'm going to suggest that we take a 10 minute break.
During a gender review we did not allocate two hours to this topic.
So thank you for.
Mr. Strick.
Mr. Strick. Mr. Strick.
Mr. Strick. Mr. Strick. Mr. Strick.
We're buffering ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome back, as we reconvene the committee, the whole meeting.
Thank you for bearing with me for a little hydration break.
Moving on, Ms. Boy, the next item, please.
Thank you, Chair. 8.2, utilities, billed community, strong fund, direct delivery stream.
There's two items on there, would you like them read out to Mr. Mooney, are you presenting her there for questions?
Maybe just briefly if that works for you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you and good morning.
Yeah, I'm presenting the, I'll briefly present this report as Ms. Thompson is a way on a well-deserved vacation break.
This report seeks border approval to submit two utilities infrastructure projects to the federal billed community strong fund under the direct delivery stream.
The projects are the self-couch and surface water treatment objective upgrade and consolidation and the shonigan wastewater upgrade into watering facility.
Both estimated cost of those projects set around 7 million each.
The self-couch and surface water treatment objective upgrade and consolidation project will modernize and connect six existing water systems to improve drinking water quality, reliability, and long-term sustainability will reduce the reliance on stressed groundwater sources.
The shonigan wastewater upgrade into watering facility will improve wastewater treatment and create a shared do watering facility that improves efficiency and environmental performance.
These projects were previously endorsed by the board in 2025 for submission under the strategic priorities fund.
When this new federal funding opportunity became available, staff reviewed the eligibility requirements determined that these same two projects are the only operational projects that currently meet the program criteria.
Specifically that they are shovel ready can begin construction within the required time frame and have the necessary detailed design work in class C cost estimates completed.
So staff's recommendation today is only to submit the applications.
It does not commit the CVR-D to proceeding with the projects or accepting any funding.
Should funding be offered particularly if it requires any local contributions, staff will return to the board with details before entering into any potential agreements.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
I have a speaker list.
I'd like to move the recommendations.
I have a mover on the seconder, but I still have questions or comments.
Director Acton.
Thank you chair.
I've had lots of my questions already answered, but then I did have a question from the community that it stumped me a little bit.
Just when it's mentioning.
Burnham is that does that include Burnham Park or like what the Burnham water system, what is the area that it services.
The service area of the Burnham water system.
Is that your question?
Okay.
Do we have that off the top of our hand?
Question from community if the Burnham Park trailer area was included in that because I know that they've had some water issues.
So are they included when it says Burnham?
Through the chair, I'm not completely sure if the Burnham Park trailer park is included within the actual service area.
I can certainly find that out.
I can just get an email.
I can do that.
Can you take that off line?
Will it?
Yes.
I fully endorse it.
I think it's exciting for the areas.
So it's not going to impact your decision.
You just want that clarification.
Yes.
Just making sure we don't want to keep you out of the loop.
So to speak.
Director Abbott, please.
Thank you chair.
And I was hoping to commend Miss Thompson, but in her absence, I'll commend her superior.
I'm very supportive of this initiative.
But I believe if I were to paraphrase what Miss Thompson wrote.
She submitted the application before fully, fully knowing all the requirements.
And accordingly, 100% funding is not likely, more like 40%.
So we are, you're likely, this is a probability.
You're likely that your team are going to come back and be advising us how to support the 60%.
But perhaps that was already budgeted before.
Thanks through the chair to the director.
Yes.
So there was an expression of interest process that was initiated before the program guide
and the criteria were released.
And so we had consultations with the program grant.
Folks, we identified these particular projects.
They did determine that they are eligible.
We made some assumptions, are we released under the impression that these grant offerings
would be 100% grant offerings.
And so subsequently they released the program guide that does reflect a 40% grant.
So the recommendation is that we would provide a grant opportunity up to the 100% that we
were led to believe would be the case through the EOI process.
Which is partly why if it's something, if it comes back something,
if we are successful, it comes back something other than 100, perhaps 40%.
That's when we would either perhaps look to modify the scope to meet the existing funding that we have in place.
And then come back to the board to come back to this body with some of that information.
Thank you.
That concludes.
No one else online.
Are you ready for the question?
All in favor?
Opposed if any?
Motion carries unanimously.
Thank you for that, Mr. Mooney.
Carry on.
Are you willing to continue fellow directors?
Lunch is here.
But if you want to carry on, we can do it.
Let's pull all through.
Ms. Boyd.
Thank you, Chair.
8.3 drinking water and watershed protection partnership.
Mr. Moor.
Thank you to the Chair.
I'll just give a couple of brief remarks just as an overview of what we're looking at here.
And then happy to take any questions.
So basically we're coming before you looking for direction on the drinking water watershed protection program partnerships for the current 2026 year.
In the past, our process has been that usually these decisions would have been made in late 2025.
And we're looking for you'll recall that we were in the process.
Mr. Elzingo was developing a new policy around contributions to community groups.
We wanted to make sure we're in alignment with that.
Now that that policy has been endorsed, it actually started with the assumption that for this year the decisions would have already been made.
So given that they haven't, we're looking for direction on those partnerships.
Last year we provided strategic partnership planning to for organizations within the community.
The couch and watershed board trying to give me.
And also the partnership for water sustainability in BC is a province-wide organization. All four organizations have indicated they would like to continue, extend these agreements for an additional year, so the recommendations for that to her before you.
For that brief calls, notes and opposites, looking for a speaker's list, director Calio.
I'd just like to move the recommended.
Okay, we have a mover and a seconder. Any questions? Director Wilson.
Yeah, thank you, Director Calio. Beat me, I was going to move the recommendation and complete no brainer here.
It's a good thing. One thing I would ask of Jeff, do we get any kind of annual updates from these organizations as to what they've actually done?
Yes, we generally do, and that's a part of the new policy that the degree of reporting out that is required depends on the threshold.
So there's one standard for amounts between 5 and 50,000 and then above 50,000, there's additional requirements.
So you'll likely recall that in the past the couch and watershed board has come forward with their annual impact report that they present on their activities and what they're doing with the good work.
And they are prepared to do that again this fall. It just needs to be endorsed by their board before they bring it here.
Good stuff. Thank you very much, Jeff. Thank you for that. Director Nicholson.
Thank you. Thanks for your report.
So given the climate change projections that we see, water I think is going to become an increasing water and watersheds are going to become a bigger and bigger issue as we move forward.
And this is definitely one of those situations.
Director Stapleton that we can work with the community on. It's really important to work with the community on because it's not something we can address ourselves.
So I really appreciate these partnership investments.
I am.
I got questions about the North couch and request though because it seems that I'm a bit confused because we did already provide $200 for an erasian trial thing that in quamich and lake correct.
$200,000 and and.
I want to know who your supplier is.
And now we have another request for an additional $100,000 is this going to be an annual thing and what's now we're adding in or maybe we've already provided funding for the salminos but I'm looking at.
Okay. Those are that's my first question.
Thank you through the chair to direct your nettle sin. So yes, with respect to North Galician.
They did present a request in 2025 asking for two different types of funding. So for 2025 we gave them 50 that $58,000 for their water quality work on on salminos and quamich and.
And that that's the similar request that's coming forward this year they're actually asking for the 50,000 for salminos and an additional 100,000 for monitoring on quamich and lake.
So that is sort of the long term piece and we would could consider.
Based on the new policy looking at next year's request for a length of a partnership if it's going to be ongoing.
The the $200,000 was a separate one time request that wasn't through this partnership program.
And that was for instead of just trying to understand the problem looking at a solution so that that's what was provided there.
So we'll set the aeration of trial aside, but we've gone up considerably from 58,000 to $150,000 request.
So I'm thinking about like I just think this kind of work is very important, but I'm also thinking about the fact that we've got shonic and lake and we provide that society with 15,000.
And we don't provide anything to couch and lake for that as far as I know although I do remember director deck provided millfoil funding I think for for millfoil could.
So it so it just seems to me from a regional perspective when we are moving forward with limited funds we really need to make sure that we're putting.
The funding around the region fairly, but also where the risk is highest and where we've got the biggest issues so and where we can get the best bang for our buck.
So I'm not I'm not getting a sense that we have that information here to make that kind of a decision.
Is it possible that we could have that information for next year or like I don't want to get locked into a situation where we've run out of money for partnership funding.
So we can't do our own work or the own work that CBRD does on the yeah it's just to me this I'm just a bit worried.
I'll leave it there.
Thank you to the chair to director Nicholson.
At the for this year the the funding request that have been put forward are within the budget that you've allocated to this partnership program and anticipating that in other years there the requests will exceed the amount that's available.
The the process that the the new policy provides for is for staff to bring recommendations and information to the committee to make decisions around.
How they would choose to allocate those funds and also because it's done through part of the budget process that another option could be.
If there's a number of requests that are deemed to be worth supporting then the budget to be increased for that as well.
So it is yeah they we look to the committee for direction on the appropriate allocation of these funds.
Thank you for that just to be clear what is the current.
I think it's a little financial budget for the partnership stream.
To the chair for the 2020 thanks budget it was increased to 250 thousand dollars.
Thank you just so that we're all on the same page and.
I will go to my speaker list before I carry on director Morrison.
Some of the same angst that director Nicholson is being here when this went to the public there was.
No thought whatsoever of the funding within this envelope to be.
Allocated to another local government now we've staff have looked into it and yes it's a viable project and it qualifies and all of that and to deliver it.
A partnership with our municipal partners over in our couch and then I will hold my nose and vote for this.
But this is so dramatically different than what was initially anticipated when this went to the public I think that this envelope of funding was supposed to be for the.
The basic societies and the other organizations that were.
You know needing a little bit of money to stay afloat and to do some good works so the scale and allocation of this as I think.
Beyond the scope of what we initially presented to the public I will support the resolution that's here but my question for staff is.
I know that we've sort of made this this funding and this program.
Available to different groups and we've we've announced that this is a funding source.
It isn't very regional right now and we've got two great big bodies of water and watersheds that are as a percentage.
Not getting a whole lot of funding and there are groups out there there groups doing work so are we proactively going to community groups and saying what have you got how can we help.
We have this this this funding envelope with these criteria or are we.
Receiving expressions of interest from those those groups that are doing some of this work so.
It is ours at a combination of both I'd like to know.
How we're getting the word.
Yeah through the the chair to director Morrison.
The the policy doesn't encourage going out and soliciting inquiries.
That being said we do have regular discussions with a bunch of different community groups to make them aware of this funding opportunity.
I have had discussions with with other groups trying to to look to more of a regional representation and to date groups in the in the north and the west part of the region have looked into.
Applying for this sort of funding and found that it hasn't necessarily been the best fit at this time.
I certainly encourage more applications and would would hope that we do get more more representation.
Just as a follow up, you know, I think that we are heading into a.
A period of a very tight fiscal circumstances and I think that we need to ensure that a fully regional.
I think should like this is represented regionally through where our dollars are going.
So I think that there should be some education given to to a new board is to how we can ensure that appropriate groups are making appropriate applications and that we're.
Maybe being a little bit more regionally sensitive with the dollars that we do have available.
Thank you.
I'll go to director justice next.
Yeah, thank you just to respond to a little bit especially to the regionality question.
I mean, these projects are in north couch and but the water bodies and questions and the issues they're facing are definitely regional.
The quantum lake work is really important because of our regional commitment to rolling Canada.
But also because the outflow of quamitch and lake goes down through couch and tribes village of quamitch and.
And then into the lower river and estuary.
I think we need to be able to control regional concerns the summer's water quality is important for exactly the same reasons, but also because of efforts to restore salmon habitat, which was.
Once it apparently historically a very important for for types of salmon.
And as for the you know getting the best bang for the bottom, I think supporting these projects does get a very big bang for the buck because of the huge amount of resources both.
Past and present time and expertise that the municipalities independently putting into them so.
I conclude thank you, going to go online to director acting.
Thank you, I too have some concerns around what we initially told the community.
How this we had originally set out to have 50,000 dollars a year your mark for.
The community groups and now this has changed significantly and we used to actually present more with our and it was a regional plan and it included ladiesmith and included shamanis and.
I think that would actually be helpful and then also.
Revealing the the reporting, but and then also having in our policy a timeline as to how long we.
Give these funds to just because people come forward requesting the funds.
I don't think we they it should automatically just be accepted.
And and especially this is a large amount going to North Calutons research.
I saw in the graph of what they were spending it on and one thing was volunteer coordination so that are is this.
I'm including staff time and is and is that in the policy to allow for some of this.
These funds to be paying for staff time so.
I'll be supporting it for now but at least some of the other speakers that think it has to be.
More oversight and more.
More regional thinking and more planning so that all areas are getting proper.
Testing because to me that this money was supposed to be mostly just for water testing.
Not really a question there so we'll just move on thank you for your comments.
Dr. Segal.
Thank you chair.
I don't have any issue with supporting the Salmonos Marsh Wildlife Society, but I just have a question of why that request is coming through North
College in and not directly through the DWP here.
Get through the chair to director. That is mainly because there's been a long-established relationship
where North College and his contract with the Salmonos Marsh Wildlife Society to do the testing work.
And their preference has been to maintain that, rather than having the Salmonos Marsh Wildlife Society applied directly.
Okay, got it. And will any of those funds be lost in administrative costs in the moving of that money between the government bodies?
There wouldn't be in that one. It's an established contract that the funds go directly towards that.
And one more question. Oh, I guess.
Okay, so this is just to help me understand we've got, you know, the Shining and Basin Society that's doing a bunch of stuff for 15,000 dollars.
And then the quamitch and lake water quality program that costs $100,000 dollars.
Like, can you explain not just some really simple terms? Is that just because of the algal bloom situation in quamitch and lake?
Or like, why is it so affordable in Shining and Lake? And very different for quamitch and lake. Thanks.
Yeah, through the chair to address the gal. It is partly because of the this severity of the the water quality issues in quamitch and lake.
So the surface water quality monitoring program that we that we have that some of this work is supporting is working to establish baseline conditions across the region with a, you know, a standardized three times a year sampling.
And then in cases where there's a problem identified that we can do some more focused intensive sampling.
So the case of Salmonos in quamitch and there's a lot of evidence of North Calichens been working on this for for a lot of years collecting data.
And they have a very robust monitoring program there. So in some senses that's expensive and also produces a lot of good data to understand that.
To understand that water quality.
In in Shana again, part of it is the capacity than it.
Excuse me, the nature of the organization that's doing the work. This is the request that they've made.
And the extent of the sampling program that's in place there is much smaller than what's happening in quamitch.
Thank you director Nicholson next.
Thank you. I was just wondering if you've.
Recent or do you plan.
It would be nice to see that your climate projection updated thing.
Look, looking at the water drinking water and water protection program and rationalizing where we're focusing our, our investments because I think I know that.
I know that there's lots of water quality issues and that's very important.
I also know that North Calichens largely could decide to land use around their lakes and probably as contributed over the years to that problem.
So I don't think offloading it on the region.
If there are other priorities that from a risk and future risk with, you know, because that one that's not going to be solved very quickly anyway.
So I just, I really think we need to start thinking about how we invest for the future.
And I mean for the next 20 years.
Like, what do we expect to get at the end?
Because, you know, it as director Morrison said dollars are tight.
We really need to, to invest smartly now.
And I, I also like to say that we're complaint comparing apples and oranges when we talk about these partnerships things because
a lot of the work that the stewardship groups do which is absolutely critical.
A lot of the work that we all do on water is an offload from the province who has responsibility.
So let's acknowledge that.
But they obviously are not going to pick up and do everything that we need to have done locally and where the ones that are going to experience the problems as they roll out in the future.
So let's, let's acknowledge that there's more than just testing water quality to understanding how well we're doing on the waterfront.
Water supply is a huge issue.
But also just the communities understanding of where the water comes from, how they need to be more conservation oriented in the summertime when we have these aquifers.
People actually don't really understand, they think that there's these lakes underneath the ground and that they're endless supply of water in the ground.
And there's not it's all connected and just raising the whole communities understanding of water is so important.
And a lot of the work that the couch on waterfront board does is around bringing community together on water issues.
And you know, $77,000 is very little money for what the work that they do.
So if you try and compare apples to oranges, it gets more and more difficult with tight dollars.
And so we need to start putting in place some policy around how that would happen.
Because like the watershed board is you can't even compare it to a stewardship society because it's got this whole reconciliation personations thing with it.
So you know, like we have to be thinking about this as we make these decisions because once you start giving your couch in $150,000 for this work, it's not going to go away and it's hard to pull money back.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Again, just comments on nothing there, Mr. Moore.
Director, Marvin.
There it is. Thank you, Chair.
I guess, and this is very high level, but given that everything is centered from north couch and caption like south and we haven't got any way of sort of funding.
There's nothing north or even west it sounds like.
When does this become a subregional function?
Like what point is that I get the idea of when we started this that yes, this should be region wide, but it's feeling like it's not.
Through the chair to director, Marvin, the DWWP as a whole has a very much regional focus and it's a you know a balance between understanding where the issues are.
And you know, spreading resources evenly versus concentrating on the hotspots that there there's some areas where it there bigger problems and they might need more more funding.
In terms of the the partnership policy itself, as it the nature of the the program is that it is supporting groups that are coming forward and asking for funding support.
So if there are no groups in a particular part of the region who are making the requests, then there's not really a mechanism for that part of the DWVP funding to go to that region, that's not to say that the rest of the work being done in the region.
It doesn't apply there you we you're well aware of the the work with the the idea on the water budget, which is something that I know other parts of the region would like to see that applied elsewhere as well.
Thanks for the actual question director, Marvin.
Online again to director action.
Okay, can you put your hand down then.
Thank you.
Dr. Kelly.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm listening to everybody's speaker today it's.
I get the feeling that you know it's it's it's almost like we're.
You know we're asking to have money given directly to North College and what's going to the.
And generally what are quality program, which is a very important program for this region, which.
You know me is probably North College in this part of the CVRE, as his Ladiesmith Lake college in.
You know, the to me I see this as a partnership this is this is I think I said I kinda get the feeling that.
at the table that this money is being given to North College and it's not being given to North
College.
It's being used to do the Aeration Project on Quantum Lake, which is such an important
project for this community as director, Justice Volk Gurdier, the Avery on Rowing Canada,
is at and on Quantum Lake on a daily basis.
I live literally right across the road from their facility and I walk my dogs down to Lake
and speak to the rollers and that and, you know, I was just down at the other day and
looking at the quality of the water and that lake and, you know, I've been told by our
Dr. Prekshot that the other water doesn't look good, but it's actually not as bad as
it looks, but, you know, this to me is such an important part of the greater part of the
CVRD, I mean, and to me, I see this as a partnership.
Thank you for that. Before I go to you, Director Nicholson, I do have a question Mr. Morif, you
don't mind. Just wondering how many strategic partnership applications were received this
year? Through the chair, these were the four that we received this year, so this is the
extent to the funding request. Thank you very much, Director Nicholson.
Thank you. I actually did have a question last time. I'm sorry.
And I forgot myself, but now I remember it. I so I really want to understand whether and if
the what drinking water watershed protection program will be reviewing and re-aligning
what your your recommendations on emphasis based on the climate projections. That's one question
that I have another question after that. Through the chair to Dr. Nicholson, just are you
to clarify the focus of this partnership project or of the DWWP is a whole?
Well, the DWD is a whole, but you know, it speaks to the partnerships thing. Yeah. So
through the chair, the DWWP has a number of different components and initially we've been focused on
the water quality. We also have our hydrometric and climatic monitoring strategy which speaks to
the water quantity and trying to get a better understanding of that and then the other piece that
you spoke to is around conservation and education and outreach and we do have staff that are
actively working on that, going out into the community and presenting on water conservation
education, better understanding of watersheds, where people's water comes from and then along with that,
we've also kicked off our water conservation rebate program which has been quite popular so far.
So we're looking at a lot of different aspects of this. In terms of the partnership program
specifically, if groups came forward with proposals and work that they wanted to do more around
other aspects of the program then that could certainly be supported.
Thank you. So I guess what I'm looking for is a much more targeted on our priorities kind of approach
to take advantage of the stewardship community and where they can help we're achieving what we think
of the most important things to do from the perspective of the future. But my other question is
and I don't know if you can answer this but maybe the counselors could what we spending on
in total on quamitch and in some of those lakes a year for water quality, not including the special
erasure and trial, how much is North Couch and contributing to this. If we're spending 150,000
how much in total is the program? Yeah, the child, not sure if I have that information.
No, I wouldn't expect you to.
Yeah, just looking through North Couch and spending in a quest they didn't give the overall budget for that.
And I don't think the counselors from North Couch and have a current understanding of the total
financial contribution at the moment but I'm sure if you reached out to North Couch and they would most
certainly provide that to you. I see no more speakers. Are you ready for the question?
All in favor? Opposed if any? That motion carries unanimously as well.
With that, next item. Thank you, Chair. I have no new business. We move to question period.
Then a question period is an opportunity to offer the public an opportunity to ask questions directly
related to today's business. Question period allows for 15 minutes. Each questioner is permitted.
One question plus a follow-up related to the answer.
Question must truly be a question and not a statement of opinion or speech. We request that your question is presented in a friendly and respectful manner, and your cooperation in maintaining a safe, respectful and orderly environment is greatly appreciated. I will do my best to answer if I cannot, we will get back to you.
Thank you, Chair McGonagall. It's Kim Bernard from Area B, Showellic and John again Lake. My questions revolve around who's responsible and what resources does the community have access to.
So going back in the order of how they appeared on the agenda, I'd like to ask about the drinking water and watershed protection program.
One of the referendum, I've got the original information that said when this service was passed, it would also address emergency water supply plans.
So my question is, do we have those, especially for the utilities mentioned in today's report like liquid waste management require a steady supply of water, even in the event of power outages?
And are we looking at community scale systems and rainwater collection? So a multifaceted question, Chair.
Two part question and I'll answer the second part first, not the first part second.
So the sister in program has recently been adopted as an option moving forward in the regional district through a policy recently about a month ago, I believe,
and that is in place for application by residents within the College Valley Regional District.
On the first item, I do not have an answer to that as it is more operational than political, but I can have staff reply to me and I'll reach out to you in a future.
And yes, not just for residents, Chair, but also for CVRD utilities that they have an emergency water supply in order to function.
And my next question has to do with the climate projections. I was looking at a related report that couch in 2050, regional collaborative framework and under climate adaptation, it describes one of our practical local level neighborhood resilience planning work.
So I believe director Segal referenced this as well, those kitchen table conversations. So my question is, who is responsible for this local level of neighborhood resilience planning work and does that look like neighborhood mapping?
Where does this come from? How do we deploy it? Who is responsible at the local level? Thank you.
Great question. I think we're all responsible.
Locally, neighborhood, and regionally. So everyone is involved with the 2050 program.
Okay, so the data, the scientific data comes from the census update or do you, this is a follow up question, Chair.
That's four questions. I don't think I can answer that one.
Okay. No, I don't have an answer to that. I will follow up with you. I'll follow up with you. I'll follow up with you.
Just a little levity for you, ma'am. Oh, good. It's blueberry day. You remembered. Any further questions? Thank you, ma'am.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and Board.
I'll make it to a question, but I do have to at least lead to how the question works.
The drink water and watershed protection partnership, including wastewater, is, as we all know, critical in our area.
And I've worked with water in the past, so I recognize that.
So referring in specifically, I guess, to the quamatchan and some of those lake situation as a representation of our problems, as well as our sewage legumes.
My question would be based on, no matter how long period of water or wastewater is, there is, there are solutions that are very affordable.
So why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in from what we've heard by questions today?
We're not even sure how many millions it may end up being by the time.
There is a possible solution to some of these different situations.
Don't utility board as we know is climbing up to 98 million, etc.
So the question is, to how and to whom should a specific solution be presented when we're told that the provincial government, and we've heard it here today, oversees waterways, controls, approvals, and how do we put forward a solution to actually solve the problem?
So how do I say that?
When the cost is so low, the performance can be based on a pilot test, and with this just saying bio-engine energetics technology has cleaned up lakes and waterways and sewage treatments and all, and there are tested on the monitoring can be confirmed by third-party labs, test,
and test include nitrogen reductions, CBOD, water, clarity, odor, TSS, total solids, ECOI, pH.
So how do we actually put the connection together for the solution for the needs that affect all of us that we all pay for?
Well, thank you very much. I'll try to answer that question.
That was a roundabout way to ask sort of a question and I'll give you sort of an answer.
I think if any stewardship partnership had that possibility of coming forward with those ideas, that would be the avenue under the current framework of the policy.
For individual people to bring that forward, I think is outside of the DWP.
But that would be an advocacy point for yourself or anyone else who's concerned with that process to move forward with political advocacy to your local MLA MPs.
Because it's not just a provincial entity, there's federal oversight as well in waterways.
So it's a very convoluted process and whatever answers we have, our should be made with the best decisions.
And if I may direct our Allison Nicholson made a really good observation, so would a possible solution be to approach the couch and water shed society, which I've attended their meetings in the past, but her concerns were very valid as to the approach.
And I don't want to answer on behalf of the couch and watershed board, but I'm sure they're open to correspondence or input at any point.
Awesome. Thanks for your help, everyone.
Thank you.
Seeing no further. Oh, I do.
Don't know. Just to.
I won't take offense about.
My name is Susan Kaufman, and I'm from Southland, and I just want to go back to 8.1, the climate adaptation report.
In the conclusion, and if I may just read out these five bullet points and they'll give you my question.
Raising awareness of how climate change will impact the region, supporting strategic and long-term planning, informing emergency preparedness and response planning for extreme events, conducting risk assessments to inform adaptation actions and designing infrastructure that considers future climate.
Future climate conditions. So my question, Mr. Chair, is our region has been impacted by flooding landslides throughout the region.
The heat domes.
How will the public, or how will the board support the public in providing those protections in our planning?
Whether it's building, growth, emergency management, because we all, we don't want those to be in those scenarios, but they are in inevitable.
So I don't want this to be seen. Can we have assurances that this won't be a developer-led.
Concerns that with these conditions would not be addressed to protect the public.
Thank you very much. I'm not a scientist, but I played one on stage once.
I'm mad scientist.
I think the public needs the information to make smart choices.
I don't see this personally as an overarching developer-based climate projection.
I see it as a region-based to make decisions on smart growth within those limits that it can be accommodated.
Personally, I think it will be probably published on our website or other avenues for the public to consume.
And to deal with, appropriately, as they see fit, we will put that forward to the board, whether it's endorsed or not as a decision of this body at the board.
Given today's vote, I'm sure there will be further discussions, so stay tuned, and we'll see where it goes from there.
That's my concern because when we talk about the prolonged heat.
You know, when we hear relatively new buildings that were built without AC or heat pumps,
but also did not have the electrical capacity to be added afterwards.
And I think that's really important looking forward.
Will the board support the ability for those crucial infrastructures to be included?
I think there's options available to through the province for cooling units for those who meet the threshold.
Without going into too much detail, if we continue down the line of staying with the step code, etc.
And the building regulations which reside provincially, we try to follow what is within those regulations.
I think locally we could accommodate any policy that this board desired to implement those, but it is the decision of this board.
Thank you for that.
Wow.
Miss Boyd.
Thank you chair.
I'm on closed session that the meeting be closed to the public in accordance with the community charter,
part four division three section 90 and the subsections are noted in accordance with each agenda item at 1223.
Motion to go in the closed move to seconded all in favor.
And I think we'll break for lunch prior to going into closed session.
Can we come back at 12, what time?
1, 10.
Mr. Chair, same link or will the new link be sent out?
New link?
No, this link.
Okay.
1, 10.