In October 2013, government\u00a0released a Legislative Proposal for a new Water Sustainability Act<\/em>. This\u00a0proposal\u00a0was informed by the many\u00a0ideas submitted by British Columbians during the initial 2009-2010 engagement process. Development of Bill 18 and Royal Assent In October 2013, government\u00a0released a Legislative Proposal for a new Water Sustainability Act. This\u00a0proposal\u00a0was informed by the many\u00a0ideas submitted by British Columbians during the initial 2009-2010 engagement process. Overview of the Legislative Proposal (PDF 3.47MB) \u2013 October 2013 Legislative Proposal (PDF 1.9MB) \u2013 October 2013 … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3243","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3243"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3978,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3243\/revisions\/3978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nOverview of the Legislative Proposal <\/a>(PDF 3.47MB) \u2013 October 2013
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\nLegislative Proposal<\/a> (PDF 1.9MB) \u2013 October 2013
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\nOver the four-week comment period on the Legislative Proposal, government received over 3000 submissions<\/a>\u00a0by email, mail and the blog, as well as 12,000\u00a0website\u00a0visits. Ministry of Environment staff reviewed\u00a0all comments in the process of preparing\u00a0the legislation.
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\nOn March 11, 2014\u00a0Bill 18, the Water Sustainability Act<\/a>\u00a0(WSA)<\/em>,<\/em> was introduced into the B.C. Legislature. On May 29, 2014, after\u00a0three readings and Committee Debate, the bill received\u00a0Royal Assent. At that time, government determined that the new Act would come into force early in 2016.
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\nThe WSA<\/em> establishes the broad legal framework for managing water in British Columbia. Much of the detail about how the general principles\u00a0laid out\u00a0in the WSA<\/em> are to be applied will be provided in regulations.
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\nDue to the complexity of the WSA<\/em> and the number of proposed regulations and policies, government is taking a phased approach to its implementation. Public comments will continue to be a resource through the ongoing development of regulations and WSA implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"