Whereas there is a lack of cooperative, consistent and available enforcement efforts at all agency levels local, provincial, federal with respect to the contravention of Riparian Area Regulations RAR; And whereas citizens and local government are challenged to fairly apply, enforce and adhere to the regulations at a reasonable cost: Therefore be it resolved that the provincial government review the watercourses designated under RAR to ensure that they have significance to fish and habitat health; And be it further resolved that the provincial government appropriately enforce the RAR and provide adequate funds for said enforcement.
Ministry of Forests, Lands Natural Resource Operations The Province stands by its responsibility to protect fish habitat, which recognizes and contributes to community needs, a healthy environment and economic growth. The Riparian Areas Regulation RAR, enacted in July 2004, is a tool available under the Fish Protection Act that directs local governments to protect the riparian fish habitat component of watercourses using their powers under Part 26 of the Local Government Act. Implementation of the RAR includes the 2008 intergovernmental cooperation agreement between the federal and provincial governments, as well as the Union of BC Municipalities. In addition to establishing roles, responsibilities and dispute resolution mechanisms, the agreement stipulates that each party will be responsible for its own direct costs. The agreement also allows for each partner to engage in cost-recovery mechanisms as necessary. Although not part of the RAR itself, these cost-recovery mechanisms often include local governments requiring developers to pay any habitat protection costs associated with their proposed activity. The RAR does not specifically prescribe how the riparian areas protection should be implemented by local government and does not require a monitoring program from the local government, but it does require local government to cooperate in monitoring, enforcement, and education. A Protocol of Interaction for Responding to Non-Compliance was jointly developed to instruct federal, provincial and local government staff on how to proceed in a coordinated fashion when faced with a RAR non-compliance situation. Ministry staff work with local governments as per the Protocol of Interaction in situations of RAR non-compliance, recognizing that many of the enforcement activities pursued under RAR would be violations of the local government bylaw. A compliance monitoring framework was developed in 2007 by statisticians at Simon Fraser University that recommends a sample size based on the number of reports submitted in a given year and provides a 90 percent confidence level. Between 2007 and 2011, 521 assessment reports were reviewed by the Ministry for accuracy and proper implementation. When workloads prevent Ministry staff from conducting monitoring, experienced Qualified Environmental Professionals QEPs are hired on contract to complete the work. The Province continues to apply monitoring results to update the training course provided by the Vancouver Island University and to develop regional workshops to improve assessment report preparation by QEPs and overall implementation of the RAR program. The purpose of the RAR methodology is to provide a means by which a QEP will assess a watercourse for fish habitat. It would be cost prohibitive for the Province to assess every stream for fish habitat in the areas where RAR applies, especially when considering that most of streams in British Columbia contribute to fish habitat. Depending on the implementation option a local government chooses, they can either absorb the cost of having streams in their jurisdiction assessed and mapped or relay the cost onto the proponent wishing to develop near a stream.