{"id":3249,"date":"2016-02-18T13:46:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T21:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qa.engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/?page_id=3249"},"modified":"2018-05-16T16:19:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T23:19:58","slug":"2015-2016","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/2015-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 &#8211; 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Updating and Replacing <\/strong><em>Water Act<\/em><strong> Regulations<\/h2>\n<p>Three regulations \u2014 the Water Regulation, the Ground Water Protection Regulation, and the Dam Safety Regulation \u2014 were authorized under the historic\u00a0<em>Water Act<\/em>. When the new\u00a0<em>Water Sustainability Act<\/em>\u00a0(<em>WSA<\/em>) came into force on February 29, 2016, it repealed the\u00a0<em>Water Act<\/em>\u00a0and these three regulations. In order to maintain the continuity of core water management functions through this transition, government developed a set of similar and updated regulations authorized under the\u00a0<em>WSA<\/em>.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nGovernment engaged extensively with key user groups and professionals on aspects of these regulations. In July 2015 government released papers describing proposed policies related to a set of core water management functions. The papers discuss:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Licensing<\/em> <em>groundwater use<\/em>\u00a0and assigning related water rights.\u00a0Proposed policies\u00a0encourage existing groundwater users to apply early for a licence.<\/li>\n<li>Requirements for constructing and maintaining wells and <em>protecting groundwater<\/em>, including the management of artesian flows and the deactivation and decommissioning of unused wells.<\/li>\n<li>Provisions to enhance <em>dam safety<\/em>; and reduce risk related to a dam failure, including more stringent requirements for emergency planning and annual review of downstream conditions.<\/li>\n<li>New <em>offences<\/em> and fines<em>, <\/em>including offences related to the beneficial use of water, groundwater licensing, and enhanced protection of aquatic ecosystems. \u2013 including groundwater licensing, groundwater protection, dam safety, and compliance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nGovernment invited British Columbians \u2013 including First Nations \u2013 to provide comments and recommendations related to these proposed policies.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/watersustainabilityact\/2015\/07\/30\/blog-post-16-proposed-water-policies-what-do-you-think\/\">Blog Post #16 &#8211; Proposed water Policies: what do you think? <\/a>\u2013 July 2015<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/app\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2016\/02\/LicensingGroundwaterUse-Web-Copy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Licensing Groundwater Use under British Columbia\u2019s Water Sustainability Act<\/a> (PDF) \u2013 July 2015<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/app\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2016\/02\/GroundwaterProtectionRegulation-Web-Copy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">The New Groundwater Protection Regulation under British Columbia\u2019s Water Sustainability Act<\/a> (PDF) \u2013 July 2015<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/app\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2016\/02\/DamSafetyRegulation-Web-Copy.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">The New Dam Safety Regulation Under British Columbia\u2019s Water Sustainability Act<\/a> (PDF) \u2013 July 2015<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/app\/uploads\/sites\/71\/2016\/02\/StrengtheningCompliance-Web-Copy-1.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Strengthening Compliance with British Columbia\u2019s new Water Sustainability Act<\/a> (PDF) \u2013 July 2015<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nGovernment considered this input in the fall of 2015 while completing new regulations,\u00a0\u00a0authorized under the <em>WSA<\/em>, that came into force on January 29, 2016 along with the <em>WSA<\/em>.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nIn general, the new WSA regulations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>maintain many elements of the existing <em>Water Act<\/em> regulations<em>;<\/em><\/li>\n<li>contain updated legal language;<\/li>\n<li>include section references and terminology aligned with the WSA;<\/li>\n<li>revise some existing policies; and<\/li>\n<li>introduce new policies authorized by the WSA (e.g., related to groundwater )<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updating and Replacing Water Act Regulations Three regulations \u2014 the Water Regulation, the Ground Water Protection Regulation, and the Dam Safety Regulation \u2014 were authorized under the historic\u00a0Water Act. When the new\u00a0Water Sustainability Act\u00a0(WSA) came into force on February 29, 2016, it repealed the\u00a0Water Act\u00a0and these three regulations. In order to maintain the continuity of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/2015-2016\/\">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-3249","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3249","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=3249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3991,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3249\/revisions\/3991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/watersustainabilityact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}