Whereas the Province has designated municipalities as diking authorities and established a wide range of authoritative powers over them including requirements to fully administer and resource ongoing dike maintenance, flood protection planning, monitoring, inspection, as well as to substantively fund disaster prevention and relief initiatives; And whereas the Province of BC completed a Preliminary Strategic Climate Risk Assessment for BC in 2019 that found that extreme weather events will continue to worsen across the province in coming years including heat waves and severe river flooding with extreme precipitation events continuing to increase toward 1 in 20 year events becoming 1 in 10 year events or lower; And whereas the administrative and financial resources required for local governments to undertake the responsibilities as diking authorities are an increasingly unsustainable burden on local communities with no dedicated funding sources from senior government: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM ask the Province to be re-established as the diking authority in local governments.
Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship The Province works closely with local governments, First Nations and other partners to address flood risks. Together we strive to reduce the social, economic and ecological disruption from flooding. Dikes are an important part of a communitys integrated flood management plan, complementing a variety of other local government approaches, such as development and zoning decisions behind dikes, stormwater and pump station infrastructure, and other structuralnon-structural flood mitigation, including nature-based solutions. In addition, some dikes also have significant local amenity interest as part of a communitys active transportation, recreational trail and economic development plans. The authority for most regulated dikes across the province was established at the time of dike construction, often decades ago. This placed authority for inspection and maintenance with local diking authorities, with costs for design and construction often shared across local, provincial, and federal levels. Since the time of construction, many communities have successfully incorporated dike infrastructure into their asset management plans. To support communities with diking and other flood risk reduction investments, the Province will continue to explore enhancements to flood mitigation funding opportunities for local governments, including opportunities to leverage federal government programs to improve flood resilience in BC. The Province has made an investment of 181 million for 429 flood mitigation projects since 2017 through programs such as the Community Emergency Preparedness Fund CEPF and Adaptation, Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Program ARDM. The Province is also investing in foundational approaches to understand and share information on flood risks in a changing climate. This includes delivery of a Provincial Disaster and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment in 2024 and an 8.69 million investment for flood-hazard mapping by March 2024, in support of BCs Climate Preparedness and Adaptation Strategy. This work will support decisions on floodplains and holistic local approaches to flood risk reduction that are stronger when made in the context of relationships and values at the community-level with support and guidelines from the Province. The Province is committed to continue to work collaboratively with local governments, First Nations and other partners to explore and implement a broad range of flood risk reduction options through integrated floodplain management plans, including structural measures such as dikes. Please note that effective October 19, 2023, the responsibility for the Dike Maintenance Act, along with several authorities for the administration of water, were transferred from the BC Ministry of Forests to the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship to better align with the broader Ministerial responsibilities for water.