Less than a tenth of British Columbia has enough water to supply municipal drinking water systems, farms and ranches, hydro dams, and sustain freshwater ecosystems — despite recent rainfall in parts of the province.
The shortages come during a nearly year-long spell of drought that has lasted through the winter, with record heat and unprecedentedly low snow levels. Drought conditions stretch from the Lower Mainland to northern B.C., straining the resources for communities and farmers, according to provincial data.
Vancouver Island and parts of the northern Peace region are particularly hard hit, with officials warning they sit at level four and five droughts, the most severe.
"What is unique about what we're seeing right now is that drought has happened [before] but it's often been on a region-by-region basis. Last year was the first year where we saw an entire province-wide drought all at once," said Coree Tull, co-chair of the B.C. Watershed Security Coalition, a coalition of farmers, hunters and anglers, Indigenous peoples, local governments, businesses, and conservationists calling for better water management in B.C.
"Where we start to get real concerns is in places like Vancouver Island, where you have almost the entire island in stage five drought." That creates a nightmarish situation where communities that in the past relied on trucking in water from better-resourced neighbors can no longer call on them because the entire region is struggling with drought, she said.
The impacts extend beyond drinking water to encompass food and electricity production, she added. Dry conditions reduce how much water farmers can use while increasing demand; they also strain the province's hydroelectricity reservoirs, forcing officials last year to purchase power from outside the province to meet demand.
East Kootenay rancher Dave Zehnder added the dry conditions have exacerbated the risk of wildfires, which have ripped through record-breaking swaths of B.C. in the past two years. Even his own ranch, located near Invermere, B.C., was impacted when a fire started on the property earlier this year. He managed to extinguish it before it grew out of control, but the fire wiped out part of his timber lot and could have easily devastated the neighbouring community watershed.
Salmon and other fish are also at risk, added Aaron Hill, executive director of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, as low water levels make it harder for them to spawn. Those shallow rivers are also warmer, stressing salmon (which need cool water) and preventing them from reaching the spawning grounds.
While the rain is "helpful," he said it’s a grim reminder that the species' survival is on the edge amid drought and warmer waters. Just a "little bit of rain and a little bit of cool weather can make the difference between life and death for thousands or tens of thousands of salmon."
Despite expectations that droughts will become more common and severe as the climate crisis deepens, Tull said there is more governments can do to quench the province's thirst. For instance, unlike most other Canadian provinces, B.C. does not require municipalities to meter their water; only a handful do. Implementing the practice province-wide would help reduce water waste, she said, as would better monitoring of large industrial water users.
Building more water storage reservoirs and bolstering wetlands are other ways to increase the amount of water stored in the environment following winter rain and snowfall, she said. Even building fake beaver dams – so-called "beaver dam analogues" – can help, mimicking highly effective natural storage systems.
Most importantly, she said the provincial and federal governments need to better fund these kinds of pre-emptive drought mitigation efforts. The coalition she co-chairs is calling for the creation of a billion-dollar endowment that could grant money to communities each year to help them better conserve and store water.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship noted the province has spent about $788 million over the last three years for a suite of drought-related programs targeting everything from salmon to cattle.
While she acknowledged this support is important, Tull said it was essential the provincial and federal government, as well as other organizations and donors, create an endowment. That model would prevent the current "piecemeal" approach, enabling First Nations and local governments to take a more preventative approach to the problem.
"The climate crisis is a water crisis, and how it shows up is either we have way too much water or we don't have enough water," she said, citing the ongoing drought and dramatic 2021 floods. "There's this myth of abundance that we've got all this water and we don't have to worry about it. What I would say is that we still have enough water in British Columbia – but we need to manage it better."
Comments
Climate change makes extreme events more likely (and frequent). Your article moans about drought and lack of water in BC and western Canada. Meanwhile, here in Montréal, we had two extreme rain events that have flooded ten of thousands of basements. Just check the medias of Montréal to see the misery of the victims of flooding!!! And on the farms, there is so much water that drainage systems can hardly cope. Farmers will have a hard time to harvest their crops from muddy fields...
An AVERAGE of rainfall would be needed between OUR east and YOUR west . Unfortunately, climate change favours extremes of drought or rainfall; not a welcomed average. As we say in French «trop, c'est comme pas assez» (too much is as bad as not enough!)
I hadn't realized that The Island was in such straits.
I'm curious how much of that might be due to increased temperatures lifting windward cloud bases upwards (where ambient temperature matches dewpoint) thus resulting in clouds blowing overtop the island mountains rather than hitting them and being pushed upwards sufficiently to result in local rain?
In there an expert in the house?
I seem to live in a parallel universe in which Victoria has had an unusually cool and wet spring and summer. If only the Trans Mountain Expansion had been built to funnel warm air to the coast instead of tar sludge, I'd be a lot happier.
Yeah, same here in Vancouver--cool, wet spring, only 1 or 2 really hot summer days, and while there wasn't a ton of rain in the summer it was nothing like the droughts we've often had recently (and it's raining right now).
I understand it's been a bit different in the interior, but I think it's a bit misleading to say we've been hard hit in the Lower Mainland, because this particular year we have not--we've been fine, there's been no hint of restrictions on watering and stuff.
(When it comes to watering lawns, though, I have seen a welcome cultural shift in recent years, with a lot more people willing to leave their lawns yellow in the summer rather than watering the heck out of them)
We do not have a water supply problem on the coast of BC. We have a water nanagement problem.
There is a great abundance of rainfall on the coast in winter. The 30-year average rainfall measured at a Vancouver city hall weather station totals up to nearly a metre of rain during the October-March wet season. And the rainfall average is increasing with climate-induced extreme storm events in winter.
Some of that water can be harvested from rooftops and winter floods in urban streams and stored for months in detention ponds and cisterns, and used to offset peak dry season uses.
Too much expensive, treated potable water is misdirected to car washes and lawns. In fact, before summer water restrictions were enacted in Metro Vancouver in the early 1990s about 40% of the summertime supply was consumed by suburban lawns. It's now about 20% -- still too high.
If we ever reach an understanding of what climate adaptation looks like in terms of sustainable urbanism, we'd be questioning why it is "necessary" to flush toilets, water gardens and fight fires with piped drinking water. Our cities could evolve to have parallel potable and non-potable water supply infrastructure connected to all buildings and fire suppression networks, from mandated indoor dprinkler syst
....sprinkler systems and outdoor hydrants. Forest fires that burn down ti
...towns have created awareness of combustible materials. But holistic thinking will inevitably lead us to rethink our cities and year-round water use.
I mean, there is a reason the existing system works that way. It's a reason that might want to be re-examined as conditions change, but fundamentally it's a lot easier and cheaper to build one set of infrastructure than to build two parallel ones. And since up until recently there was plenty of potable water to meet all the needs, there was no reason to worry about it.
Now there are reasons to worry about it. The situation is changing.
Gulf Island residents already harvest winter rainwater and store it in big cisterns. It flows through multiple filters and then UV light disinfection before leaving the tap. I did a calculation for a relative with property on the islands, using the long term winter rainfall average of Nanaimo weather stations and their roof area. It worked out to over 100,000 litres of rain falling on average on their roof over a 6-month winter season. They have had issues with ground water supply in summer drawdown periods, and the rain info led to a redesign of their downspout routing to a 30,000 litre cistern with layers of filtration and off-the-shelf UV light treatment.
It is not overly expensive to up rain barrels into larger cisterns for West Coast gardens. California is already running toilet-to-tap systems in the driest areas linking extensive treatment between inlets and outlets. We're nowhere near that extreme, but it does make sense to tap grey water and rain water resources to protect the integrity of the existing drinking water supply and infrastructure and minimize the need to expand in future only because we waste too much of it.
All I'm saying is that rain and grey water are untapped resources that will, if utilized, make the existing expensive and vast potable water system much more efficient and decrease demand. Flushing toilets alone consumes close to 1/3 of household supply.
Connecting the storm water system to storage with filtration won't break the bank. There are already massive underground reservoirs for Metro Vancouver's water supply system dotted all over, usually buried in parks and under public tennis courts and plazas. What's a few more, but connected instead to fire hydrants and sprinkler systems fir high rises?
The cost? Pipes are cheap. Trenching for their placement is expensive. The cost of adding one more pipe to a trench that's already dug is peanuts. All new multi-family development could be connected to a parallel non potable water distribution system for negligible cost as part of the initial service connections. Ditto municiplal sewer and water replacement projects.
It is costly to install new systems without doubling up with other underground infrastructure. That is how Vacouver's salt water fire fighting diesel pumping systems were installed. Note the blue hydrants downtown and in False Creek. They had to be placed in deeper trenches in stable subsurface conditions and thus the expense was huge. That is why the system does not extend to lower density neighbourhoods.