The Regional District of Nanaimo’s Drinking Water and Watershed Protection Program has been presented with the Environmental Operators Certification Program Innovation Award for 2020.
The award recognizes individuals or organizations that have applied new ways of thinking that positively transform the water industry.
The award was accepted virtually at the annual EOCP conference last month.
For more than a decade the RDN’s Drinking Water and Watershed Protection program has enabled and facilitated high levels of collaboration across the water operators and purveyors in the region, as well as within the community and with senior government.
Program initiatives include providing public outreach, educational resources and rebates in support of water conservation; offering professional development and networking sessions for small water system operators; and collecting monitoring data and supporting regional studies to better understand the watersheds and aquifers that provide the source waters for community drinking water.
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The key innovation has been streamlining communications across agencies and using watershed boundaries as a lens to implement and enable sustainable and collaborative water management in our region.
“We are honoured that the EOCP committee was unanimous in its decision to present the Innovation Award to the RDN,” said chair Ian Thorpe. “The DWWP Program has excelled at co-ordinating efforts between the many water providers in the region, united by the common goal of water sustainability.”
The RDN board in February 2020, adopted an updated 10-year action plan for the Drinking Water and Watershed Protection service that include region-wide initiatives in water awareness and stewardship; water information and science; and water-centric planning and policy support.
— NEWS Staff, submitted
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