90% believe water is B.C.’s most precious resource: Poll

Is water more valuable than gas? More than 90 per cent of British Columbians surveyed for a poll released Wednesday said they believe fresh water is B.C.’s most precious resource.

The study, Freshwater Insights: A Survey of British Columbian Attitudes on Fresh Water, also says three quarters of British Columbians believe that if nothing is done to improve management of water resources, it will become a serious problem in the next decade.

The survey was conducted by McAllister Opinion Research, based on online survey interviews with 1,017 adults from around B.C. It was commissioned last year by the Vancouver Foundation and the B.C. Real Estate Foundation.

This week’s release comes as the B.C. government is in the process of updating the 104-year-old Water Act. The Ministry of Environment has said they will introduce the new Water Sustainability Act into the legislature this spring.

“British Columbians are recognizing the government has to do something,” said Oliver Brandes, a co-director of the University of Victoria’s POLIS Project, who helped design the study.

Brandes has worked on water issues in B.C. for more than a decade, including five years advising the B.C. government as a member of the Water Act Modernization Technical Advisory Committee. He said that recently the topic has become “acutely” important for people in B.C. “The government making an effort to update the Water Act has helped raise its profile. It both raises the attention of average people, and also, people are realizing how bad we had it, how out-of-date our (legislation) was,” he said.

While water issues are increasingly being discussed in B.C. and Canada, they’re also top of mind for officials in Ottawa and Washington, D.C.

In a Postmedia interview published this week, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Gary Doer, said water is set to become the key issue between Canada and the U.S.

Doer told Postmedia’s William Marsden that as the importance of water diplomacy grows, it will make the debates about pipelines “look silly.”