Innovation Fall 2024

explains. “Our almost exclusive focus on increasing the size of infrastructure, culverts and bridges, raising the dykes, have failed us. That’s the policy of the ’60s and ’70s and we’re still using it. Not only is our infrastructure ailing and becoming old, it does not accommodate the effect of climate change on the risk of flooding.” Alila says clear-cut logging policy in the headwaters is a significant factor, adding it takes 60 to 80 years for logged forest in the Southern Interior to recover the hydrologic functionality of pre-logging conditions, and even longer in Northern B.C., where it can take a century. “I think we in BC are going to be subject to a heightened flood risk for decades to come,” says Alila. View the Watershed Assessment and Management of Hydrologic and Geomorphic Risk in the Forest Sector guidelines by scanning the QR code.

A section of Highway 1, at Tank Hill near Lytton, was washed away in the 2021 BC floods. Photo: BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure

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Fall 2024

Innovation