Holistic Approach

In order to reach its full agricultural potential, the city of Surrey must move towards a more holistic and sustainable perspective on water management. Until recently, water resources have been plentiful enough in Surrey that it has been effective to manage each water resource in isolation, with little regard for the interconnectedness of the needs and goals embedded in the regional water system. The city’s various water quality and quantity monitoring programs each focus primarily on a single priority in isolation – agricultural irrigation, flood prevention, aquatic habitat protection, etc. – and there is very little integration among these programs. However, water exists as an interconnected system, and as water become scarce the links between water resources in all sectors become more obvious. The mismanagement of water in one sector can lead to the detriment of water resources in another sector, and thus diminish the functioning of the entire water system. For example, at this time the Serpentine, Nicomekl, and Campbell Rivers, the 3 primary sources of agricultural water in Surrey, are all fully allocated and there are no more water licenses available. To continue with agricultural water management with a “business as usual” philosophy (i.e. to continue to remove water from the rivers) would result in not only in an agricultural water shortage that would affect all farmers – now and in the future, but would also lead to environmental degradation, and loss of recreation value for Surrey residents. Therefore, as the demand for water continually increases from all sectors, it is only by moving towards a systems-based perspective of water management that Surrey will be able to manage its finite water resources in a holistic way that ensures the livelihood and well-being of all its residents.

Water is a particularly challenging resource to manage sustainably. By definition, sustainable resource management must function on both short- and long-term time scales; be adaptive, robust, resilient, and flexible; include participatory decision-making from all water users; and be multi-disciplinary in scope [1], in order to ensure that needs of all users, both now and in the future, are satisfied. Although our understanding of the concept of “sustainability” is still murky (how does one both use a resource and maintain it for future generations?) the term sticks because it is both appealing and necessary. Therefore, this project continues to use the term sustainable; however, rather than using the concept of sustainability as an endpoint, it is used in reference to a process of becoming more efficient with resource use, and improving the capacity of the resource to renew itself into the future. Water is a unique resource, and therefore is particularly challenging to manage sustainably, yet it concurrently presents unique opportunities. As a “flow resource” – it moves through time and space by many pathways, changing in property as it flows. Furthermore, water is complexly interconnected in its different forms (rivers, groundwater, grey water, etc.) yet our understanding of hydrology is still quite poor.

As a result, this goal of this project is to develop a system-based and regional scale approach to understanding the flow pathways and state of water resources in Surrey; in order to identify alternative water resources, inefficiencies, and waste; for the purpose of increasing opportunities for new agricultural production.

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