The British Columbia Water Sustainability Act was introduced to the public on February 29, 2016. The new regulations and water licencing requirements were put in place to help conserve our fresh, clean water for current and future BC residents.
Under the new rules of the act, all non-domestic groundwater wells must be licenced. The Groundwater Licence Application includes a series of questions related to the water works infrastructure and the hydrogeological setting (well details, estimated yield, etc.), and is submitted to the BC provincial government through FrontCounter BC.
Existing users are those who were using water from their well before February 29, 2016. Existing users applying for a groundwater licence are required to apply by March 1, 2019. Doing so will allow you to:
Avoid the one-time application fee ($250-$10,000)
Secure your water rights and your date of precedence under the First-In-Time First-In-Right policy
Avoid losing your water supply by being in non-compliance with the Law
Avoid penalties and fines: See Section 106 (6) and 107 (2) of the Water Sustainability Act
After the March 1, 2019 deadline, existing users will be treated as a new applicant when applying for their water licence.
Secure your water rights now!
Contact Waterline's Water Sustainability Coordinator,
Maury Scott at:
250-585-0802 | wsa@waterlineresources.com
Waterline Resources has applied for over a hundred groundwater applications on behalf of clients across BC . We use our in-house Geodatabase System to extract the required information for the applications quickly, and we correspond with the government on your behalf.