This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and the communities working to implement solutions.

Widespread drought and wildfires swept western Canada during this summer’s record-breaking heatwaves. But in B.C., it isn’t just the heat that has environmentalists and locals concerned, as applications for new water bottling permits — some within the province’s most arid regions — are on the rise. 

Many water bottling applications fall within areas that saw stage 3, 4 and 5 drought levels during the summer. And as more pour in, the affected communities have sparked a province-wide debate on whether it’s time for B.C. to crack down on new water-bottling permits.

Jamie Fletcher, a councillor for the High Bar First Nation, said one of the primary reasons that no members of his nation live on their reserve is the lack of access to drinking water. Instead, many live on their traditional territory in the nearby town of Clinton — where members of the High Bar First Nation and other residents are currently in the midst of a battle against a water bottling plant proposed by a Surrey-based investment company. In its application to the province, which is still under review, Clinton Hongyan Zhenghong International Investment Inc. says it intends to bottle up to 864,000 litres of water per day just south of Clinton, for export. According to a 2016 study on water use in the province, that’s more water than 2,500 British Columbians use each day — assuming they have access to clean water.

Fletcher and other members of his nation are opposed to the proposed bottling plant. 

“This year, we just went through a drought and it showed us we don’t have available water in our water table to support this project,” he said.

“Between growing communities, drought and the wildfire situation, I definitely have huge concerns of us being able to sustain [companies] tapping into our water resource in the local area and selling it.”

Cutoff Valley, north of Clinton, B.C., nearby the proposed site of a new water bottling plant. Photo: Government of British Columbia / Flickr

New polling released in October by the Real Estate Foundation of BC and the University of Victoria’s POLIS Water Sustainability Project found increasing concern about community water sources. Sixty-six per cent of British Columbians now say they are concerned about the potential for a major water crisis in their community in the next few years — up from 57 per cent in 2018. Eighty-five per cent of respondents said they were concerned about bulk water extraction by commercial water bottlers. 

Recent report proposes a moratorium on new water bottling permits

A recent report from the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre found B.C.’s water bottling industry has brought the province to a tipping point in managing its natural resources. The report notes at least eight applications for water-bottling licences — including two within B.C.’s most arid regions — were recently submitted to the province.

There is some disagreement on this figure, as the province says only six licences are under consideration, while community and Indigenous organizations have said an additional five are being considered.

“We’ve come to the end of [an era when] you can use as much water whenever you want,” said Deborah Curran, executive director of the Environmental Law Centre, pointing to the rise in stage 5 droughts and wildfires across the province this past summer.

“We can’t wait until there’s a crisis before we take action.”

The report proposes a moratorium on new water bottling permits in the province due to concerns of residents over the impact of groundwater extraction, a lack of meaningful collaboration with local Indigenous groups and plastic bottle pollution. 

On the ground, Fletcher feels that consultation with Indigenous people on issues like the Clinton water bottling plant has been treated like a checkbox by local and provincial governments, instead of the meaningful, engaged and consent-driven process it should be. 

One concern shared by Fletcher and many environmentalists in B.C. is the low cost of groundwater removed from B.C.’s aquifers. Water bottling companies pay $2.25 per million litres, which Curran says allows for water to be bottled cheaply and exported. 

Fletcher said he is concerned about the lack of meaningful consultation with First Nations when it comes to permitting licences for commercial water bottling plants. Photo: Frank Luca / The Narwhal

According to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations, B.C. currently licenses about 16.75 billion litres of water for bottling each year, at a return of $44,000 (or less than a penny per bottle) for the provincial government. This amounts to the annual water use of more than 92,000 British Columbians over the course of a year — a significant portion of which, the province says, is sourced from municipal water systems. 

All this while there are drinking water advisories in 20 First Nation communities across B.C.

“Our communities are growing, our climate is changing — everything is putting stress on water resources. B.C. has always been known to have abundant water, we’ve been very lucky that way,” said Bruce Gibbons, a Vancouver Island-based advocate for water management. 

“But we can’t continue on assuming that we will always have abundant water because things are changing.”

Water scarcity is a pressing concern: according to the Environmental Law Centre report, 63 per cent of British Columbians live in water-stressed areas. This issue is anticipated to grow more severe as the climate crisis increases the frequency of droughts and unprecedented heatwaves. Not to mention, water bottles account for one of the biggest pollutants in the country, according to the Environmental Law Centre report, with more than 120 million bottles unaccounted for in the past year. 

This issue has been increasingly on the minds of residents and officials in recent years. The Union of B.C. Municipalities passed a resolution in 2019 calling on the B.C. government to stop issuing groundwater extraction licences to commercial water bottling operations in the province — a measure that, so far, has not been heeded.

“But we can’t continue on assuming that we will always have abundant water because things are changing.”

Bruce Gibbons, Vancouver Island-based advocate for water management

In response to the University of Victoria’s report and the proposed moratorium, the Ministry of Forests stopped short of committing to specific actions.

“Staff are reviewing the report in depth and considering it in the context of working with Indigenous Peoples to advance reconciliation and ensuring water is sustainably managed in B.C.,” Tyler Hooper, a spokesperson for the ministry, said.

“While the province has not contemplated a moratorium on water bottling licences to date, we acknowledge there is high public interest in this issue and the allocation of groundwater used for this commercial purpose. We will study the report further and continue to consider public concerns while monitoring developments, particularly the potential and actual impacts of climate change and population growth on domestic water supply needs.”

One of the problems Curran cites is the lack of clarity around how water is actually used in the province.

“We’re one of the last jurisdictions in the world to regulate the use of groundwater, and that only started in 2016,” Curran said, referring to the passage of the Water Sustainability Act. 

“We’ve barely begun to understand what the use burden is on aquifers in B.C., to quantify that, and then to ask the question of whether or not that’s sustainable.”

According to Curran, B.C. doesn’t yet have a complete understanding of the water balance in each community across the province, including the stress put on each aquifer and how much total water is being withdrawn. Only 15 per cent of existing commercial water bottling operators are licensed, she said.

Deborah Curran, executive director of the Environmental Law Centre, said B.C. needs to be proactive when it comes to protecting freshwater resources, especially after the summer drought. “We can’t wait until there’s a crisis before we take action.” Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The Canadian Bottled Water Association (CBWA) declined to answer questions regarding the report and water bottling in B.C., but provided a statement referencing Ontario’s updated regulations around water taking, saying it is being managed sustainably.

“CBWA believes that all permitting decisions must be based on science facts and data to ensure proper resource protection,” said Elizabeth Griswold, the Canadian Bottled Water Association’s executive director.

“Permits issued by the province are based on sound science and the bottled water industry uses less than 0.02 per cent of groundwater in [B.C.]: a small fraction of all permitted water use.”

Although the Ministry of Forests could not confirm the data provided by the Canadian Bottled Water Association, and Griswold declined to provide a source for it, the province said that is not an unreasonable estimation.

However, Danielle Paydli, B.C. organizer for the Canadian Freshwater Alliance, said there’s a gap in the province’s knowledge of how much water is available in B.C. aquifers. And with only a small fraction of water bottling plants licensed, even less is known about how those aquifers are being used. As more applications for groundwater use are submitted, the Ministry of Forests says this picture will become more clear.

Danielle Paydli, B.C. organizer for the Canadian Freshwater Alliance, said the province lacks important information on groundwater abundance and use. Photo: Submitted by Danielle Paydli

B.C. could take a beat from other jurisdictions on water bottling

Currently, in B.C., the most successful campaign for a water bottling moratorium started in a small Vancouver Island town in 2018.

Bruce Gibbons didn’t mean to start a province-wide campaign when he first organized a rally against one of his neighbours in Merville, B.C. The neighbour had secured a licence from the province to withdraw and bottle up to 10,000 litres of freshwater per day from the community’s shared aquifer — a prospect that deeply concerned Gibbons.

“There’s a lot of people in the Comox Valley that have trouble at the best of times: their wells run dry, their wells are intermittent depending on the weather or depending on the season,” he said. “It was just a big concern that the government would allow somebody to draw thousands of litres of water from that shared aquifer, bottle it and sell it for profit.”

Over 200 people showed up at Gibbons’ rally, with attendees filling the Comox Valley Regional District board room and overflowing into the parking lot to show their opposition at the rezoning meeting one Monday morning in 2018. 

Gibbons’ group, the Merville Water Guardians, with support from the Canadian Freshwater Alliance and K’ómoks First Nation, campaigned for months to deny the rezoning necessary for commercial water bottling. After hundreds of letters to local and provincial representatives, petitions and door-to-door campaigning, the Comox Valley Regional District voted unanimously against the rezoning. They also signed a historic agreement with the K’ómoks First Nation to “collaboratively manage and conserve” the valley’s water resources.

In the years since, Gibbons has presented in person or sent written presentations to mayors, city councillors and regional district directors of every community in B.C. His goal is to implore them to take action to better regulate the use of groundwater in the water bottling industry. To his knowledge, at least 10 communities have since changed their water bottling bylaws.

The Canadian Freshwater Alliance worked alongside Gibbons to send 30,000 letters from British Columbians to local municipalities ahead of the 2019 Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in support of the resolution for a water bottling moratorium, which passed. However, the province has yet to take action in support of this resolution.

Other jurisdictions in Canada and further afield are also working to improve how they manage their water.

Ontario temporarily instituted a moratorium in 2016 on new water bottling permits that allowed the province to assess the state of water management and update its water quantity management framework. The moratorium expired in April 2021, once again allowing new applications and permit amendments. 

The Comox Valley Regional District voted unanimously to forego rezoning that would have allowed commercial water bottling. Photo: Cole Freeman

According to Michelle Woodhouse, water program manager at the Ontario-based environmental charity Environmental Defence, one victory for water management advocates in Ontario is that local governments now have the discretion to review any permit applications for new or expanded proposals seeking to take more than 379,000 litres of water per day from nearby aquifers. This gives communities a form of veto power over projects that directly affect them, she said, and is a power many B.C. residents may be eager to have.

But this new system has also drawn criticism, particularly from Six Nations of the Grand River, for a lack of consent from Indigenous groups for water bottling on their territories. The production of plastic to bottle water is another concern, according to Woodhouse.

“In 2020, Wall Street started to trade water as a commodity just like gold,” said Woodhouse. As freshwater becomes scarce, she said, that water shouldn’t be commodified.

Further abroad, New Zealand’s approach to water management is very different, said Bryan Jenkins, president of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand. Decisions on water use are made on the basis of the potential for adverse environmental effects — but once that is determined, there are few other barriers for those looking to bottle, sell and export it.

“Water is owned by everyone, which effectively means it’s owned by no one,” Jenkins said. “It also means that once the water has been allocated … then the water is effectively free.” 

One waterway in New Zealand, however, has seen extraordinary measures taken to ensure its sustainability. The Whanganui River, on the country’s North Island, was given the same legal status as a person — allowing substantial concerns for its sustainability to factor into how it is managed.

“So if you’re looking at using the river in any shape or form — withdrawing water, discharging into water — then you have to consider the rights of the river,” Jenkins said.

The Indigenous Māori people of New Zealand also view water as something that has “mauri,” or life force. In addition to losing a sacred resource to New Zealanders, Jenkins said, exporting water can be viewed culturally as “losing the life force of the country.” 

This is a feeling that British Columbians, Fletcher and Curran, said they can relate to when they see water bottled and exported internationally — especially when there is a growing need for water in many local communities.

Although two years have passed since the Union of B.C. Municipalities voted in favour of a moratorium on water bottling, efforts to promote better water management within the province remain ongoing. Paydli is hopeful the province will take inspiration from Merville and other municipalities by acting on this moratorium.

“It’s really some low-lying fruit for the government,” she said.

“Water bottling really highlights how our watersheds are being mismanaged in B.C., and I think it’s something people can see very obviously that there’s things that need to change.” 

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

Updated Nov. 19, at 11:23 a.m. ET: this article was updated to correct a calculation error. The amount of water Hongyan Zhenghong International Investment Inc. is proposing to draw outside Clinton, B.C. is 864 cubic metres — or 864,000 litres. Therefore it’s as much water as 2,769 average British Columbians use, considering B.C. residents use an average of 312 litres per day, according to a 2016 study.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and the communities working to implement solutions.

Sebastian Audet navigates his paddleboard over to a floating dock on Seymour Lake, a small freshwater body tucked into the forested hills at the base of Dzilh Yez (Hudson Bay Mountain.) A few minutes drive from Smithers, B.C., the lake is a local favourite for summer swimming and winter skating. But 12-year-old Audet isn’t here to play — he’s monitoring the health of the aquatic ecosystem.

“Dissolved oxygen is what the fish breathe,” he explains. “Right now, the dissolved oxygen is on the bottom but there’s some on the top. If it gets worse and we have a turnover, which is when it mixes it all together, we could have a fish kill and all the fish would die and float up and stuff.”

His mom, Shawna Audet, asks him how the lake’s levels are doing and he makes a face.

“Most fish can live but you couldn’t have any ‘fishing fish’ like trout because they need higher dissolved oxygen levels,” he answers.

Reine Vizcarra and Johanna Pfalz from Skeena Knowledge Trust watch as water rangers Kian Staplin, Kaiya Staplin and Sebastian Audet collect a sample from Seymour Lake, near Smithers, B.C.

On the dock, accompanied by his friends Kian and Kaiya Staplin, Sebastian unzips a blue waterproof case and starts unpacking various vials and test equipment. One of the threats to the lake, the Audets explain, is that many recreational users don’t clean up after their dogs while ice skating.

“Everyone wants their magical skate with their dog but as soon as their off-leash dog is behind them they can’t see what’s happening,” Shawna says.

“The magical skate people, you can’t even talk to them, they just get really mad at you,” Sebastien adds. He doesn’t know how much of a direct impact dog poop has on fish but says it’s one of several factors changing the ecosystem.

The Audet family received the free equipment — a Water Rangers water quality monitoring kit — from Skeena Knowledge Trust, a local non-profit.

Young water rangers collect data on the health of Seymour Lake.

“I think a lot of people just don’t understand the connection between the environment that they’re recreating in and how other people use that environment,” Johanna Pfalz, lead coordinator at the trust, tells The Narwhal.

The Skeena Knowledge Trust works with interested groups and individuals like Sebastian to provide tools, education and resources to empower people and generate much-needed data. Pfalz says when the World Wildlife Fund published its first watersheds report in 2017, it identified alarming data deficiencies in the Skeena watershed. 

“This Water Rangers program was one of the responses to help to fill those data gaps,” she says. “We connect groups like this with Water Rangers and try to facilitate, to take it to that next level where kids like Sebastian actually get out there and start contributing.”

Johanna Pfalz is the lead coordinator at Skeena Knowledge Trust, a non-profit dedicated to enhancing understanding of the Skeena watershed.

‘Reports you don’t even know exist’: conservation scientist

The Skeena Knowledge Trust was formed in 2017 to address data deficiencies on wild salmon and salmon habitat in the Skeena River watershed, but it had its genesis almost one decade earlier.

In early 2009, after four years of research and consultation with stakeholders across the province, a provincially appointed panel of independent scientists presented B.C. with a report on Pacific salmon that made dozens of recommendations. Among them, the panel said the province should create a new ministry to oversee information on salmon and salmon habitat.

“A new provincial governance system will require many changes, beginning with the creation of a single water and land agency responsible for making all water and land decisions in watersheds in accordance with ecosystem principles,” the report noted. “It will also require that federal, provincial, First Nations and local governments collaborate on watershed governance, and that ‘ecosystem goods and services’ such as carbon storage are valued in decisions.”

When the province hadn’t responded to the report many months later, Skeena residents convened a conference to discuss what action they could take. 

“Part of what came out of that conference is that, when it comes to knowledge and information management — the information we use to make decisions around salmon ecosystems — there’s nobody managing that,” Pfalz says.

Pfalz works with her technical team to develop ways of making science and policy data more accessible to the general public.

Ekaterina Daviel is a technician with Skeena Knowledge Trust. Her work helps make fisheries data more accessible to the public.

The Skeena Knowledge Trust formed in 2017 to address data deficiencies on wild salmon and salmon habitat in the Skeena watershed.

People and programs — such as Fisheries and Oceans Canada and provincial ministries — were collecting information, but there wasn’t a one-stop shop for data on salmon and salmon watersheds.

“If you have a question about the salmon ecosystem in the Skeena, you have to go to a dozen different sources,” she points out

For most people, that kind of digging (and the time required to do it) just isn’t feasible. Once the trust was formed, it developed a mapping portal and a Skeena salmon data centre, compiling all available information in one place.

Michael Price, conservation scientist and new trustee with the organization, says the data centre  is indispensable for both the general public and researchers.

“One thing that the Skeena Knowledge Trust has been doing is compiling all these old fisheries reports,” he says in a phone interview. “To me, they are absolutely fascinating because they provide us with such important context for salmon.” 

As an example, he points to the detailed reports written by creek walkers, the Fisheries and Oceans Canada contractors who monitor spawning salmon populations by walking the freshwater systems and counting fish. Their reports include much more than the numbers of fish returning to their natal streams.

“Some of the notes on whether there were floods or what the winter was like, they give some real context that you can potentially start to see patterns with,” he explains.

Decades of cuts to salmon monitoring leave B.C. scientists uncertain of fish populations

Historic reports are often difficult to find, or only available by request, but their importance cannot be understated. Conservationists relied heavily on high-quality, trusted data during the campaign to protect the Skeena estuary from the potential impacts of a proposed liquefied natural gas facility on Lelu Island, Price notes. 

“What surfaced through that process — and it was quite a lengthy process — was a report that I feel was quite seminal to the argument that industrial development really needs to take care in this sensitive area.”

That report, he says, was an old Fisheries and Oceans Canada document. 

“The question was posed, ‘If we have development in the Prince Rupert area, in the Skeena estuary, where are some areas that have high sensitivity to salmon?’” he explains. “They reported that they didn’t think that development should occur in the Lelu Island, Flora Bank area. So here’s a historical report that could easily have been buried, that could have been overlooked — and the whole decision could have been different.”

“It’s those types of reports — that you may not think are significant —  that the Knowledge Trust is really trying to bring to the surface so that, yes, it’s easier for us as researchers or individuals that are concerned watershed citizens to find that information, instead of it being buried in some box, maybe on paper and not even digitized yet.”

“If we don’t have that information or if we forget that information, we are bound to make mistakes of the past — it’s just inevitable human nature,” he adds.

As for which reports make it into the salmon data centre, Pfalz says there are criteria to ensure credibility.

“The short of it is that basically anything that is generated through a public land-use planning process, whether it’s the Gitanyow land-use plan, or another First Nation’s land-use plan or fisheries-sensitive watershed plan, anything like that, especially the [Environmental Stewardship Initiative] work, that’s all fairly credible.”

The Environmental Stewardship Initiative is collaborative landscape-level research conducted by the B.C. government and Indigenous communities across the province. Recently, B.C. tried to argue against data collected under the program in a Supreme Court case launched by the Blueberry River First Nation. In a precedent-setting ruling, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Emily Burke dismissed the province’s arguments, included the data as evidence and found the province guilty of breaching the Nation’s Treaty Rights.

“It’s not our goal to filter information,” Pfalz says. “Maybe there’s a report that could be controversial, but it’s still very credible. It’s up to our audience to determine what they do with that information.”

Water testing is a way for the public to contribute and advocate for protection

On the water, Sebastian and friends note baseline data and test for conductivity, dissolved oxygen, hardness, alkalinity and more. They all agree their favourite is the test for dissolved oxygen.

“I kind of like getting to smash the vial,” Kaiya Staplin says.

“They’re clear to start with and then when you smash them it kind of immediately turns blue,” Kian Staplin adds.

Sebastian doesn’t mince words when he talks about why it’s important to collect the information.

“Because this lake’s almost at the stage of death. This lake’s going to die, like, weeds die, fish die — done.”

Kaiya Staplin takes a water sample from Seymour Lake.

Ian Sharpe, a retired aquatic biologist who worked for B.C.’s Ministry of Environment for 25 years, says that’s part of the natural evolution of ecosystems.

“It will be a wetland and then it will be a meadow and then it will be a forest, with a creek running through it,” he says on a call from a Vancouver Island ferry terminal.  But he adds it’s important to ensure human impacts don’t speed up the process.

Sharpe wears many hats in what he describes as “semi-retirement,” but all are connected to water and watersheds. 

“I’m going to do this until I croak,” he says.

Among his multiple roles, he’s a trustee with the Morice Watershed Monitoring Trust, an organization that collaborates with the Skeena Knowledge Trust.

“Our purpose is to conserve and protect water for the benefit of Wet’suwet’en people,” Sharpe says, noting the importance of collaborating with Indigenous communities. 

He describes what Sebastian and others are doing as the first step towards influencing decisions on a watershed level.

“You can start them off at the basic level and your hope is that there will be some kind of sustained effort and they will get more and more interested in getting deeper and deeper into the science,” he says. “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t — it’s a mixed bag.”

Water rangers play on a lakefront property near Smithers after collecting data on water quality.

Pfalz says Sebastian’s depth of understanding of his local ecosystem sets the stage for him to interact with decision-makers.

“The more knowledgeable your public is, then that empowers the public to interact on a more knowledgeable base with the province and the feds,” she says. “It’s hard to argue with data.”

Kat Kavanagh, executive director of Water Rangers, says she’s thrilled to hear about the work Sebastian and his friends are doing. On a Zoom call with The Narwhal, her smile gets bigger and bigger as she hears about the youngster’s dedication and achievements.

“How is he doing all this stuff already?” she asks, beaming. “I love it!”

She says the idea to develop the Water Rangers kits and create the network first started when she watched her father collecting water samples, sending them away to a lab, getting the results back and having no way to make sense of it or share that data.

“Even when we were collecting data, we weren’t very effectively bringing it out into the community, bringing it to decision makers.”

After piloting the project in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, the demand for the test kits skyrocketed.

Water ranger Sebastian Audet explains the importance of monitoring water quality at his home near Smithers.

“The Skeena [Knowledge Trust] was one of the groups in a data deficient area that was going to be using the Water Rangers test kits,” she says. “And then we were going to give the data back to [World Wildlife Fund] in a format that they could use to help these groups start to fill those data gaps.”

Kavanagh describes herself as a tool-maker and she’s clearly passionate about the impacts the tools are having.

“Talking about climate change, people don’t know what they can do and I think that they’re looking for things that they can do to contribute,” she says. “The reason I think we’re resonating is not only is it an easy way to get eyes on the ground, we’re also a way to get that baseline data so that we can notice when things are really starting to change.”

Kavanagh says they’re working with the University of Regina on a five-year project and partnering with groups in northern Saskatchewan, where many communities don’t have the capacity to do their own water quality testing. The network extends across the entire country with different groups using the kits to address a wide range of issues.

“We had one group in New Brunswick monitoring a little river because there was a proposed mine upstream,” she says. “If the mine gets approved they have some baseline data. They can say this was the pre-state and they have some ownership of that. They said they felt helpless before and now they have a plan.”

‘People protect what they love’

Because data on fisheries and water quality is often hard for the general public to understand, both the Water Rangers and Skeena Knowledge Trust use charts and graphs to present the data in a more palatable format.

At an office in Smithers, Ekaterina Daviel, a technician working with the trust, shows how the Seymour Lake information is organized.

“It has a nice little timeline of all the reports that we’ve had in the salmon data centre,” she says, scrolling through the page. “It gives you a quick overview of when the reports were put together and what’s been done more recently, as well as a quick synopsis of some of the issues. We also put in a water chemistry piece and this is currently using the data from the government.”

Daviel also shows how the trust has amalgamated historic and current data from the Tyee Test Fishery, a Fisheries and Oceans Canada project that has acquired data on Skeena River sockeye populations since 1955. The interactive visualization makes it easy for users to compare historic runs to current numbers. That context is especially useful for the younger generation, which hasn’t been around long enough to witness the steady decline in salmon populations across the province.

Shawna Audet helps youth water rangers upload data to the water rangers website, which charts trends on water quality. The data is publicly available and includes information about watersheds across North America.

Returning to shore, Sebastian and his friends head out to play in the woods behind the Audet’s house while Shawna inputs the data to the Water Rangers portal on an iPad. It only takes a few minutes. She demonstrates how the site charts all the data over time. On a local level, she says the work has already paid off. 

“We had someone throw a whole bunch of salt in the water and I was like, ‘Wow, Johanna, our hardness just went crazy,’ ” she says. 

She pulls up the graph, which clearly shows a significant spike, recalling how she had overheard a neighbour talking about throwing salt into the lake, to kill off the vegetation in the hopes of  creating a sandy beach area, around the same time the spike popped up on the charts. 

“It led Sebastian to go and have a conversation with the neighbour. It’s awkward but really valuable that you can speak up about what’s going on.”

Pfalz says one of the next steps is advocating for data collected by people like Sebastian for use in policy-making.

“There needs to be some more connectedness around integrating citizen science into provincial level decision-making,” she says. “The government needs data, right? That’s how they work — everything has to be documented.”

Sharpe points out decisions can also be made on a smaller scale.

“As a scientist, I connect what you need to learn with what decisions you might wish to influence,” he says. “So that’s what kind of data are you going to need, how are you going to use it [and] how are you going to interpret the information?”

For Sebastian and his friends, the water testing is a bit of a means to an end — a chance to hang out and play — but it’s also sowing a seed of awareness and creating a connection to an ecosystem that is going to need their help.

As Kavanagh puts it, one of the most important objectives is to get people out into their watersheds.

“People protect what they love. The more often you go out to the water, the more connected you are to it, the more likely you are to feel like you can do things, you can speak up for it, you can become an advocate.”

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and the communities working to implement solutions.

On a hot July afternoon Ahousaht Guardian Byron Charlie walked along the Bedwell River on the west coast of Vancouver Island. He was part of a restoration team there to rebuild a side channel of the river that had almost completely dried up.

Charlie said as they worked, the group came across small, calm pools of water — which usually act as cool refuges for fish — that were dangerously warm and low. They were so shallow, Charlie said, they weren’t much beyond “puddles.”

One of these small pools — Charlie estimates it was about six feet long and two inches deep — was teeming with tiny salmon. Knowing there was no end in sight to the summer heat and certainly no rain in the forecast, the team scooped up about 400 juvenile coho and transferred them to another part of the river. 

Looking around, they noticed another pool filled with fish and agreed to return the next day to continue the rescue operation. 

“If we didn’t do it that day, all those fish would have been gone,” Charlie told The Narwhal during an outdoor interview at a Tofino beach, describing how some of the small pools of water had completely dried up over night. “They would have been trapped there.”

Byron Charlie, an Ahousaht First Nation Guardian, radios the crew from Central Westcoast Forest Society after arriving in Bedwell Sound, in Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino. “When I was younger, my grandfather always said, ‘We’re salt water people — from the water,’ ” Charlie said. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

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  The coastal town of Tofino is layered in fog in the morning. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

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  Charlie drives out of the Tofino harbour on his way to Bedwell Sound. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

They returned to save another 600 juvenile coho from the second pool. Over the course of their project, they saved 1,600 fish, mostly coho. But not all the young salmon were so lucky, said Jessica Hutchinson, executive director of the Central Westcoast Forest Society, who was working with Charlie that day.

“We unfortunately came across a number of pools that we didn’t make it to in time,” she told The Narwhal in an interview. “A lot of salmon died.”

Hutchinson fears this summer, marked as it was by heat, fire and drought, is “an indicator of what’s to come” as climate change intensifies. At the time of Charlie and Hutchison’s baby salmon rescue mission, Western Vancouver Island was at level three drought, according to the British Columbia Drought Information Portal, which means adverse impacts to fish and ecosystems are “possible.” In August, those adverse impacts became “almost certain” as the region moved into drought level five. Despite cooler weather and some showers, the island remains locked in extreme drought conditions and, as waterways remain dry and unseasonably warm, many fish are struggling to survive.

To Hutchinson, the prolonged drought emphasizes the urgency of the Bedwell River restoration project, on which the Central Westcoast Forest Society is partnering with the Ahousaht First Nation.

“It was a terrible year for fish,” she said. “It’s good for us to see how fragile these salmon populations are and how close they are to the brink of extinction, and the importance of doing this work now before it’s too late.”

Byron Charlie carries a bucket of around 15 rescued juvenile salmon to release into the Bedwell River, within the Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino, on July 30, 2021. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Byron Charlie released juvenile salmon into the Bedwell River, within the Clayoquot Sound, near Tofino, on July 30, 2021. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Recovering a river buried by destructive logging practices

The drought exacerbated dry conditions in the Bedwell River, but the tributary that the restoration team focused their efforts on had already been mostly buried by erosion, caused by destructive logging practices throughout the 20th century. 

“We’re seeing a lot of creeks go dry when a watershed is logged,” Hutchinson said, which is why she feels restoration “is key” to save salmon. 

Cutting down trees and building logging roads contributes to and can accelerate erosion, increasing the amount of gravel and debris that enters a river during rainfall. While logging companies are now required to leave buffers of trees along rivers, that wasn’t required when Bedwell Sound was logged. 

“Without the extensive root systems that hold the integrity of the river together, the river really unravels,” Hutchinson said. A disrupted river can widen and become more shallow, meaning it will dry up more easily in hot and dry weather, which further compounds the impacts of erosion.

The shallower the water, the more intensely rain events can impact spawning beds, Mandala Smulders, Central Westcoast Forest Society’s director of operations, said.

“Tiny little fish just get washed out into the estuary and they’re not ready for all that predation, she said. Without pools and side-channels, “there’s nowhere for them to take refuge … it’s basically just like a highway, and they get washed out to sea when they’re born.”

“Water that used to be at the surface is now buried metres and metres below. We see these pools dry up and these fish die,” Hutchinson said.

That’s what brought the restoration team to Bedwell River this past August: to dig out side channels of the river, about six feet underground, to hit groundwater to get the tributary running again.

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  Charlie (left) and Kaylyn Kwasnecha, Central Westcoast Forest Society research and monitoring coordinator, record the length and weight of a juvenile salmon before transplanting it into the Bedwell River. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

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“There will be water flow all year so salmon won’t be stuck and dying in there,” Charlie said. Throughout September, the team is planting new trees along the river to restabilize the banks.

The work on the Bedwell River is funded by a $1 million grant that the society received from the province through the Healthy Watersheds Initiative. The province invested $27 million in watershed restoration as part of B.C.’s economic recovery plan to create jobs for workers affected by COVID-19. 

“We have much to learn from Indigenous nations about stewardship of the land and water and, by applying their traditional practices and knowledge in concert with western science, together we are creating a healthier future for communities and species across B.C.,” George Heyman, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said in an Aug. 31 statement about the initiative.

The Central Westcoast Forest Society applied for the initiative funding in partnership with the Hesquiaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht First Nations of Clayoquot Sound to take on restoration in the nations’ territories. The First Nations identified areas of cultural and ecological importance to restore and the program now employs 25 people, of which 12 are Indigenous people from local nations. 

Mandala Smulders, Central Westcoast Forest Society’s director of operations, told The Narwhal that while some of the jobs are on contract, they plan to find more funding to retain the new hires.

“We are trying to build internal capacity. The more experienced people get, the more we can put them on other projects,” she said.

The funding has so far been used to train 14 people in an environmental technician certificate program. Ten of those trainees were Indigenous, including Charlie, who was also supported in First Aid training.

“[Restoration] is essential to the survival and sustainability of salmon in our territory,” Charlie said. “I’m hoping it’s going to have a really big impact on the river systems here and see our [salmon] numbers start climbing again.”

Trees are driven to Bedwell Sound for planting at the salmon restoration project. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

While the funding has been critical to the restoration work done in areas selected by the three nations, Hutchinson said the $1 million is a drop in the bucket when you consider the work needed to restore habitat damaged by logging all across Clayoquot Sound.

Last year, the Forest Practices Board — B.C.’s forestry watchdog — found logging practices across the province were having negative impacts on salmon habitat. In particular the report found forestry roads were leading to increased sediment in salmon-bearing rivers. Elevated sediment can decrease the abundance of plants fish feed on, can smother salmon eggs and can prevent fish from travelling upstream to spawn.The board also found that existing government legislation around sediment impacting fish habitat is vague, making it hard to enforce effective sediment management.

Chinook in Bedwell Sound declined 80 per cent, estimates suggest

Charlie remembers when he was a child, the whole Ahousaht community would go out on the water to seine fish. In one day, they would catch enough winter stocks for every family.

Today, it takes a month or two to catch enough fish for winter stocks for everyone, he said.

He still fishes when he can, though the nation has shut down in-river fishing for the next five years to allow as many fish to spawn as possible. His five-year-old son loves fishing. 

“He loves salmon, any kind of fish, crabs. But when we catch them and bring them home, he’s like ‘can we just keep them?’ And I’m like, ‘you can’t keep ‘em and eat ‘em, you gotta pick one,’” he said with a laugh.

His children are his motivation for wanting to protect the land, waters and salmon.

“It’s paradise,” he said, sitting on a log and looking out at the ocean. “I want to keep it that way for more generations to come, I want my kids to be out here to be able to enjoy everything I did as a kid. I want them to see the abundance of salmon and other resources we have.”

Fog drapes the ocean’s surface in Clayoquot Sound. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

Salmon in B.C. have faced multiple challenges, including habitat loss due to industry, historic overharvesting, climate change and fish farms, which carry disease and sea lice. Hutchinson said the Bedwell River is thought to have supported upwards of 1,600 to 1,900 chinook historically (according to stream counts, traditional knowledge and estimating the stream’s spawner capacity). But last year only 302 returned to spawn, suggesting a decline between 81 and 84 per cent.

“For a salmon leaving the Bedwell River, it’s like a gauntlet dodging fish farms,” Charlie said. A juvenile fish must swim past eight fish farms to reach the ocean.

“For a little fish like that to go through, it’s pretty unbelievable,” he said.

Members of the Ahousaht First Nation have long been involved in protests against salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound.

Fish farms struggle with sea lice infestations due to cramped conditions. Lice can latch on to migrating wild salmon, damaging their fins and scales and causing bleeding. Research conducted by biologist Alexandra Morton and researcher Rich Routledge from Simon Fraser University found the vast majority of juvenile pink and chum salmon, 97 per cent and 88 per cent respectively, infected with a motile louse died. A June 2020 study by Morton, using data published by salmon farming companies Mowi, Cermaq and Grieg, found that 37 per cent of salmon farms exceeded sea lice limits this spring. A separate September 2020 study found that salmon farms in B.C. regularly under-count sea lice infestations.In March, Norwegian salmon farming company Cermaq, 14 of 20 salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound, applied for a provincial permit to dump nearly one million litres of a sea lice pesticide into the region’s waters to deal with ongoing infestations.

Several salmon populations have declined by over 80 per cent within Clayoquot Sound, Hutchinson said. The Tranquil River in Tla-o-qui-aht territory historically saw 35,000 Chum returning in the 1950s, but saw only 5,391 returned this year.

When it comes to wild salmon populations, it’s a competition of “which one is doing the worst,” she said. 

“Unfortunately, it’s a race to the bottom.”

Habitat restoration is “low-hanging fruit” to assist salmon immediately while things like policy change around forestry practices, climate change, hatcheries and aquaculture take longer, Hutchinson said.

“Every salmon nest (which is called a redd), contains upwards of several hundred to several thousand eggs. If we can protect that one redd and help it produce as many fish as possible, that alone can be key to significantly changing our annual returns,” she said.

But right now, because of the state of the watershed, the rivers can represent a threat to returning fish, rather than a safe refuge. “These watersheds in a degraded state are actually a sink for coho salmon,” she said.

But the work in the Bedwell River is turning that trend around. Hutchinson said their team with the Ahousaht saved more coho in the river than returned to during the entire previous year. 

A fish farm shrouded in fog floats in Clayoquot Sound, just outside Tofino. Photo: Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

‘We need to invest in restoration like we invested in resource extraction’

Smulders said keeping salmon healthy is central to the health of the whole watershed. 

Salmon feed invertebrates in the streams and whales in the ocean, and many other species. They bring back marine nutrients from the ocean, so that when they spawn and die, they act as fertilizer in the watershed. When bears, eagles and wolves drag salmon carcasses into the forest, they fertilize trees, giving back to the very trees that stabilized the stream they grew up in. 

“A cedar tree now has these amazing marine-derived nutrients that help to make it grow into a huge, beautiful tree,” Smulders said. 

Hutchinson explained restoration is not just building some pools, but restoring processes that should be naturally occurring, and the work should be led by local First Nations. She said more money needs to be put into restoration.

“We need to invest in restoration like we invested in resource extraction so many years ago,” she said.

“I want to keep what we have — just the love of the land, knowing where you come from,” Charlie told The Narwhal. Melissa Renwick / The Narwhal

A July study called Working for Watersheds, published by the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, the POLIS Water Sustainability Project and the BC Water Funders Collaborative, found there is a huge social and economic benefit in supporting the ‘watershed sector,’ which is defined as “jobs that directly support better outcomes for healthy watersheds.” The report’s analysis found the watershed sector supported more than 45,000 jobs in British Columbia in 2019 through restoration efforts, urban and industrial water management and educational programs.

The report writers advocate the province establish a $100 million per year Watershed Security Fund to help grow the sector.

“From agriculture, to tourism, to mining, to clean energy, the province’s economy and wealth directly depend on clean fresh water and functioning watersheds,” the report reads.

The report estimated that if the status quo continues, the watershed sector is set up to add 7,400 new jobs and contribute $767 million to B.C.’s gross domestic product by 2030. But if the province launched a Watershed Security Fund for ten years, it predicts that would create an additional 13,000 jobs and contribute an additional $1.3 billion to B.C.’s gross domestic product by 2030.

“As British Columbians suffer from the impacts of wildfires, heat waves and droughts, communities will continue to see threats to water security. We cannot afford to wait and must protect water and watersheds in communities throughout B.C.,” provincial Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau said in a statement responding to the report.

In an Aug. 31 press release, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy promised that the 60 Healthy Watershed Initiative projects undertaken this year with the province’s $27 million stimulus will “contribute to B.C.’s commitment to develop a Watershed Security Strategy and Fund,” and that nature-based climate solutions are part of its draft climate preparedness and adaptation strategy it will release in 2022.

To keep salmon and the watershed healthy, Charlie would like to see a transition from fish farms to more sustainable aquaculture like oyster, mussels and kelp farms, with First Nations getting the chance to be leaders in these industries. He also wants to see more funding for Indigenous stewardship and more Guardians hired.

“I want to keep what we have — just the love of the land, knowing where you come from,” he said.

Charlie said restoring Bedwell Sound is significant for him because it was once home to the Ahousaht village Huuʔinmitis, where his great-great-grandfather was born and raised. Ahousaht people later gathered to live on Flores Island northeast of Tofino.

“It’s always a little surreal going up and doing what we’re doing and trying to keep the ecosystem running, knowing that that’s what they were doing thousands of years ago, and my grandfather … and knowing I’m walking on the same land he did, doing essentially the same things they did,” Charlie said.

And Charlie has high hopes for the Bedwell River, because he has seen the positive impacts of restoration elsewhere. After restoring Anderson Creek in Ahousaht territory with the Central Westcoast Forest Society, he said the creek was “like night and day.” They built pools, spawning beds and riffles. He said they stood in silence and just took the scene in.

“I think it’s the perfect place for salmon to go now,” he said. 

“It’s just a matter of waiting.”

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and the communities working to implement solutions.

Almost buried in sand at the edge of Paul Nash’s prolific urban farm in Sechelt is an inflatable children’s swimming pool, filled to the brim with one of the most precious commodities on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast.

Water.

An unrelenting drought is parching southern communities on the Sunshine Coast, just north of Vancouver, and, as officials warn that the region is on the brink of running out of water, residents are nervously eyeing the long range forecast of dry weather.

After two months with only occasional sprinkles of rain, water levels on Chapman Lake, which supplies water to more than 85 per cent of Sunshine Coast residents, have dropped precipitously.

Pleas to the public to cut water use, enforcement and identification of water profligates or residents with unfixed water leaks, are having some effect, but, without multiple days of more than 25 millimetres of rain a day, combined with a further drop in water usage, the Chapman water supply could run out by late September.

It is obvious that the Sunshine Coast can no longer be considered a rainforest, at least in summer, says Sunshine Coast Regional District chair Lori Pratt, who has been on an emotional roller coaster as the crisis has progressed.

“We really are in a very dire situation,” Pratt says.

“I lose a lot of sleep over this,” she says, wiping back inadvertent tears.

Lori Pratt from the Sunshine Coast Regional District says the region can no longer be considered a rainforest during the consistently dry summer months. Eighty-five per cent of the district obtains drinking water from the Chapman Lake reservoir, which is at severely low levels after a very dry summer.

Even after the rains come, it will not allay concerns that summer droughts are becoming the norm. Stage four water restrictions, which forbid any outside use of tap water, were imposed in 2015 for 22 days, 2017 for 25 days and 2018 for 14 days. 

This year brought the earliest-ever clampdown, with stage four restrictions kicking in on Aug. 10 and now extending past 30 days with no immediate signs of letting up.

Despite those restrictions, water levels continue to drop and in late August the district opened its Emergency Operations Centre, meaning it is ready for action if a state of emergency is declared.

That would likely mean shutting off all users that are not supporting human health — essentially the hospital and long-term care facilities — firefighting or drinking water, says Remko Rosenboom, Sunshine Coast Regional District general manager of infrastructure services.

Homes could be without water for part of the day and some non-essential industries and businesses could temporarily be forced to close, warns the regional district.

“We have breweries on the coast, we have cement factories on the coast and other companies that are using significant amounts of water and, if every drop counts, every drop counts,” Rosenboom says.

Innovation is thriving as residents figure out how to continue farming or growing vegetable gardens during the drought and the emergency has triggered an extraordinary community effort to deliver totes of water to those in need.

At Ruby’s Run urban farm in Sechelt, Nash is adjusting the hoses on his new swimming pool storage system.

With stage four restrictions, Nash, who intensively farms three-quarters of an acre of leased land, knew his preexisting 1,000-litre storage tank would not be sufficient and racked his brains to come up with water storage ideas.

The answer came as he watched his neighbour’s grandchildren playing in a plastic pool.

“I looked across and thought ‘that’s water storage,’ ” Nash says.

A quick check online showed two pools were available locally and Nash says he “burnt rubber” to get to the store. He set up the 10,000-litre pool before visiting a friend with a well, carting water back in tanks and, finally, setting up pumps for the drip systems that now keep his plants alive.

“At three a.m. I completed it. That was 24 hours for the project, from concept to completion … It’s the cheapest, simplest thing and at the end of the season we can deflate it and roll it up. And it cost me $250,” Nash says.

At Ruby’s Run, the strawberries, potatoes, garlic, carrots, flowers and myriad other fruits and vegetables — many growing in raised boxes above other plantings, allowing run-through drip irrigation to be used twice — produce will be harvested earlier than usual, but, for this year, the farm has dodged a bullet.

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  Paul Nash from Ruby’s Run urban farm in Sechelt fills a children’s pool with water in an act of improvised storage.

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However, Sunshine Coast residents are coming to the realization that being on the front line of climate change is likely to mean annual droughts. Many are grappling with the question of whether it is a personal or government responsibility to ensure farms and other businesses have a steady water supply.

Bill Stockwell, owner of Central Coast Concrete and Stockwell Sand and Gravel, said, like many other industries in the area, he has his own water supply through a water licence on a spring on his property. 

“We do have lots of water, we just have a storage problem,” he says, noting that his company recycles all water used for processes such as washing gravel.

“All my water goes straight through wash pads and settling ponds, where the sediment settles out, and then I reuse the water to wash my aggregate, so I use it over and over again. I do lose water to evaporation and stuff that sticks to the rocks, but for the most part, if I didn’t recycle, I wouldn’t have enough water,” he says.

It is difficult to rely on the district water system because water shortages have not been taken seriously, says Stockwell, who believes it will take a full-blown crisis, such as running completely out of water, to get all levels of government working together to solve the problem.

In the meantime, Stockwell is planning on putting in a well for backup and has steel tanks that provide 20,000 gallons of storage on his property.

The neighbouring mine, Lehigh Cement Company, has its own well and recycles water and many other commercial users do the same, he says.

It’s a part of the way many on the Sunshine Coast are bearing the costs of continuing to live and work in the area.

That cost is definitely being felt by farmers, Nash says.

“If we want free water that falls from the sky, we are going to have to pay to store it. If we are going to ask the government to solve the problem, there’s a cost to that too,” Nash says.

“If you haven’t got water, you have nothing, so, whatever it costs, it’s worth it. If doing water management is going to break you, the farm wasn’t viable in the first place,” Nash says, who knows some are already turning to dryland farming, which include techniques and methods to store water and adapt to growing crops without irrigation but within perpetually dry conditions.

At Farmer Dan’s Farm Stand, the piles of tomatoes, garlic and onions did not require intensive watering.

“But I won’t have enough water to be doing new seedings,” says farmer Dan White. “If there’s no rain, I don’t really have the money this year, or the systems in place, to get delivered water onto my crops.

The cost of drilling a deep well can stretch into tens of thousands of dollars, which small farms like White’s, running on marginal profits, cannot afford.

“I hope the carrots have long taproots and, with some mulching, they’ll be able to cruise to maturity … I’m just going to have to ride out the watering restrictions and harvest what I can,” he says.

White, with farming in his blood, has no intention of giving up. “But I’m probably going to have to get a real job over the winter,” he says.

Farmer Dan White of Farmer Dan’s Farm Stand says the drought may force him to seek work outside of farming this winter.

At Hough Heritage Farm, Raquel Kolof, Sunshine Coast Farmers Institute president, invested more than $20,000 in a well and thousands more in electrical and pumping equipment after struggling through previous water restrictions.

Like much of the Sunshine Coast, there is water under the ground on Kolof’s property, but, until a well was dug, much of it was not accessible.

Striding through green pastures, where Berkshire pigs, Icelandic sheep, turkeys and unusual breeds of goats graze together and ducks swim on a series of ponds, Kolof has no doubt drilling a well was money well spent.

“It’s a big financial burden, but, if people can do it, it is well worth it,” says Kolof, who is passionate about the need to produce sustainable local food and wants government to pay more attention to other outdoor water users, such as the construction industry.

A farm with animals feeds the soil and ensures that water goes back into the aquifer, she says, picking up a handful of richly composted dirt.

“This is animal poop in action,” she says.

“When we unfairly look at farms as water users, we are not acknowledging the role that we play in stewarding water,” she says.

Raquel Kolof, president of the Sunshine Coast Farmers Institute, at the Hough Heritage Farm.

Hough Heritage Farm.

In a region laced with small farms, where many residents rely on home gardens to stock freezers, the water restrictions came as a bitter blow.

The regional district, faced with dismay from farmers, who were in peak growing and harvesting season, gave those with ‘farm class status’ a two-week exemption from the watering restrictions, but the farm status rule means, while 16 farms are temporarily able to continue watering, numerous non-status farms are unable to irrigate their crops.

The saviour for many is an unprecedented community effort which has seen breweries, cideries and industry joining forces with volunteers to save unused water, or pick up well water in 1,000 gallon totes, which are then delivered to small farms or those with home gardens.

Walking through lush community gardens in Roberts Creek, Casandra Fletcher, board chair of the One Straw Society, which aims to create local, sustainable food systems, says there was panic when water restrictions were brought in, especially as some of the affected farms grow for the food bank.

“It was pretty crazy and I called a meeting with organizations and local governments — everyone connected with food growing,” she says.

Casandra Fletcher, board chair of the One Straw Society, says many farmers experienced panic when the stage four water restrictions were brought in for some regions within the Sunshine Coast Regional District.

Freshly watered kale at the One Straw Society’s Tiny Farm.

Out of that came Project Water Box, led by Fletcher and Brian Smith, CEO of Persephone Brewing Company, which operates both a brewery and a farm.

Breweries and cideries offered their 1,000-litre plastic totes and excess grey water and, within 48 hours, 100 people who needed water signed up, while those with pickup trucks and companies with tankers, offered to deliver the water.

“It was an amazing pulling together of the community. … It was pretty darn beautiful,” Fletcher says.

Applicants were “triaged,” with food-growing farms given priority, and trucks now deliver water to more than 100 people along an 80 kilometre stretch of highway, including remote, rural properties, Fletcher says.

The program has also ordered 100 more totes, which will be sold for water storage during the rainy season, as one step towards community resiliency.

Brian Smith from Persephone Brewing Company fills a water tank as part of Project Water Box.

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  Smith readies a truck for delivery.

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  A Persephone truck, loaded with water for distribution to farmers in need on the Sunshine Coast.

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  Patrick Connelly from Sunday Cider delivering water to One Straw Society.

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Smith, whose brewery runs tasting rooms and picnic areas, as well as growing much of the food sold to visitors, says most excess water at the brewery comes from cooling the beer, with cold water running around hot pipes.

“As it warms up, that cold water becomes wastewater, but it is clean. It hasn’t been contaminated in any way, so we have been capturing that,” Smith says.

“Being a farm, we are critically aware of the importance of water … and then it occurred to us that we probably have more water than we need here, so we started cooperating with the One Straw Society to get it to others,” he says.

The totes, which sit empty for much of the year, were the next part of the equation and friends joined the push to bring in more totes or offer water from wells, Smith says.

“So now, my guess is there’s probably been more than 100 totes brought to the Sunshine Coast, so that’s a hundred thousand litres of new water storage,” he says.

At Sunday Cider the smell of fermenting apples is drifting over the picnic area as Patrick Connelly does a quick walk through the trees. Once apple trees are established, they do not need much water, but most of the trees are young and the challenge is keeping them healthy during the drought.

Climate change looms over all the water problems, which is why hardy apple trees are so important, Connelly says, pointing out that little, ugly apples make great cider while the trees help with carbon sequestration.

The cidery does not have as much spare water as the breweries, but sustainability is its core value, so the business is doing what it can to support Project Water Box, Connelly says.

Patrick Connelly from Sunday Cider.

“We don’t want to plant and pray, we need to take rational measures.”

“The thing that made the most sense was to offer our totes that are used for cider-making and for juice transport and storage and offer them to farms that need them to store water in site,” he says.

But it is a stopgap measure and long-term solutions are needed, Connelly emphasizes, pointing out that the water problem has been apparent for at least 25 years.

“I think the [Sunshine Coast Regional District] is working on it and understands the level of crisis, but there’s not a ton of action that has been taken that actually solves the problem,” he says.

“We don’t want to plant and pray, we need to take rational measures.”

The grounds at Sunday Cider.

Ione Smith of Upland Agricultural Consulting agrees that there is a history of missed opportunities.

“When we worked on the agricultural area plan for the Sunshine Coast Regional District we recommended that the regional government play a better role in bulk purchasing cisterns or water storage tanks for farmers,” she tells The Narwhal.

“There has been an opportunity for years to be prepared for this. Everyone knew the drought  was coming. It was an opportunity missed by the entire community, from local government down, to get ahead of this.”

As Sunshine Coast residents ponder how water shortages became so acute, there are recurring themes such as lack of infrastructure upgrades by previous regional district boards — apparently unwilling to be the targets of public blowback from increased taxes — provincial government delays in deciding on water licence applications, development and increased tourism.

“Anyone who has been here more than a couple of years knows that water problems have not been solved. The community has been wrestling with that and trying to encourage our politicians to show a little bit of leadership, but it hasn’t happened. The infrastructure doesn’t exist yet,” Smith, from the Persephone Brewing Company, says.

“The biggest missing piece is political will. … Political cycles are short and one of the fears of local politicians is that we live in a small community and they don’t want to be disliked,” he says.

That appears to have changed with the current regional board and the sense of urgency is now palpable. District chair Pratt lays much of the blame at the feet of the provincial government and says that, with continual delays in making decisions on applications, such as use of the Church Road well site, a proposed groundwater well system, her feelings have progressed from frustration to downright anger.

“We’re just waiting and it feels like every time we’ve got something ready, the goalposts have changed or they are expecting us to get more information,” she says.

“Water expansion projects take a lot of time as you wait for provincial approvals and testing and feasibility studies on wells and aquifers. We’ve been denied the Chapman Lake expansion that would have allowed for accessing more water sources within that system,” she says.

Chapman Creek.

In 2018 Environment Minister George Heyman turned down an application to raise the dam after a divisive community debate. The changes would have meant either removing part of Tetrahedron Provincial Park, the largest protected area on the Sunshine Coast, or downgrading the park.

Reliance on Chapman Lake means the water system is fragile, but the regional district has been trying to diversify, only to be stymied by provincial delays, although Pratt says she and others in the district hope the Church Road well site will be operational by next year.

The Church Road application went to the province in 2019 and, that year, Doug Donaldson, then forests minister, said it was a top priority, Pratt says with exasperation.

“He assured us at a face-to-face meeting at the Union of B.C. Municipalities that it would be given the highest priority for health and safety. We’ve followed the process. We are still waiting on licensing from the province,” she says.

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  “Water expansion projects take a lot of time,” Pratt says.

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  A district water sign in Roberts Creek notifies the public of the severe water restrictions in place.

A spokesperson for the Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Ministry said there is ongoing consultation about the Church Road site with the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Nation and the Town of Gibsons has also submitted applications for the same groundwater source.

Technical assessment is near the final stage and the province is working with municipalities to manage the aquifer “in a responsible and sustainable manner through a water management plan,” the spokesperson said.

Although some are pointing at increased development and tourism as part of the problem, average population growth is between one and two per cent, says Pratt, who, in her non-political life, is a realtor who has also worked in the tourism industry.

Last month the regional board stopped short of putting a moratorium on water service connections, which is one of the few ways the board can restrict development in rural areas where subdivision applications are approved by the province, but the board may revisit that motion, Pratt says.

Residential water users were among the top water users in August 2021, according to a district presentation.

Pratt doubts whether tourism can be restricted, but some, such as councillor Selena August, acting Chief of shíshálh (Sechelt) First Nation, worry that tourists and absentee landlords are creating problems because they are less concerned than locals about the ramifications of running out of water.

“There has been a huge increase in visitors. I am looking at licence plates from Ontario, Alberta and the States. It’s crazy,” she says.

Annie Wise, executive director of Sunshine Coast Tourism, says that she doesn’t see tourism as a primary driver of drought. “While there are more travellers in the summer months, I don’t think that’s what’s driving the water emergency — I think it’s climate change.”The district’s data shows a clear connection between a lack of water and water wasted via major water leaks, she says. And the bulk of tourists during summer months flock to the region’s largest resort properties in Pender Harbour and Egmont, Wise says, which rely on different water source from Chapman Lake that is not currently experiencing a water emergency.

Five large siphons are now being used to pump water from depleted Chapman Lake, with district staff either having to hike the 18-kilometre round trip to the lake or hitch helicopter rides in to regularly check the siphons.

The regional district is consulting with the shíshálh Nation about plans to siphon water from nearby Edwards Lake — a project that, once consultations are concluded, would need provincial approval — and there are ongoing negotiations with the Town of Gibsons, which draws its water from an aquifer, on re-opening a hookup into their system and then “paying back” the water to top up the aquifer once the rains start. If the regional district starts drawing water from the aquifer it is likely Gibsons to more severe water restrictions.

Along Chapman Creek, at the intake for the nearby water treatment plant, a trickle of water is tumbling gently over a picturesque waterfall, a far cry from the torrent seen during wet weather.

Because the creek is salmon-bearing, the province, under the B.C. Water Sustainability Act, stipulates 200 litres a second must be released to maintain flows for the fish, Rosenboom says, adding under current conditions, more water is going to protect the fish than into the water treatment plant. The regional district is considering asking for an amendment, but are not optimistic that the province and Fisheries and Oceans Canada will support an emergency amendment. The requirement for 200 litres a second for the fish was brought in in 2016 by the province under the Water Sustainability Act.

Much now depends on whether residents can hold their water usage below 11 million litres a day, Rosenboom says. Over the last weekend of August, usage ranged between 10.1 and 11.6 million litres. 

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  Remko Rosenboom says the amount of water that can be drawn from Chapman Lake is restricted to protect fish species.

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  The district’s water treatment plant, which is fed by Chapman Lake.

One key is finding those with large leaks on their properties and Pratt said that, recently, four leaky properties were identified and found to be sending about 345,000 litres a day into the ground.

Staff schedules at the regional district have been adjusted to watch for night-time guerilla watering, ultra-green lawns or luscious flowers.

But even those telltale signs do not necessarily mean someone is breaching water regulations as some are taking measures such as showering while standing in containers to catch grey water to irrigate the garden or flush toilets, Rosenboom says.

So far, four people have been handed $500 fines and 15 shut off notices have been sent to properties with large leaks where owners were previously warned to fix the problem. Based on August figures from those with meters, 338 leak letters and 487 warning letters to high water users have been sent out.

Dean McKinley, regional district chief administrative officer, said that most residents know it is essential to push daily use below 11 million litres and feel a sense of personal responsibility to fall under that target. 

“A lot of times these environmental issues are so daunting that people think ‘what difference could it possibly make if I change my behaviour,’ but this is an example of what we do right now can make a huge difference. It could easily make the difference between getting through this crisis or finding ourselves in a dire situation,” he says.

There are 6,200 water meters in the district, which help identify leaks or higher-than-average water usage, and metering the Sechelt area is a priority for the regional district. In July, the district received approval from electors to borrow up to $7.25 million over 15 years for a water metering installation project, but it is not known when the project will be completed.

A few kilometres away, in Gibsons, water use dropped by almost 55 per cent after meters were installed and, simultaneously, the town decided to incrementally increase the price of water.

“We decided a five per cent increase a year until 2026 or 2027 would be sustainable and we’ve not had any pushback,” says Gibsons Mayor Bill Beamish.

The changes mean that the town is now able to supply Upper Gibsons with water, which it could not do before, and the aquifer has higher levels of water than in 2012 because, although more people are being serviced, they are using less water.

The downside is that “it has pushed up water bills for users such as farmers,” says Ian Rogers of Shady Hazel Farm, who estimates his water bill this year will be between $6,000 and $10,000.

“We will lose money this year for sure,” he says, and, holding up one of the largest of the year’s crops, quips, “this is a $600 pumpkin.”

Ian Rogers of Shady Hazel Farm shows off his pumpkin crop.

Lush cosmos and dahlias grow at Shady Hazel Farm.

The Gibsons approach, which has concentrated on mapping natural assets of the region and protecting the aquifer, has helped the town remain at stage two water restrictions, which limit outdoor water use to two evenings a week, between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Every dollar collected for water goes back into the system, says Gibsons Chief Administrative Officer Emanuel Machado.

A study, completed in 2012, looked at the condition of the aquifer and the ability to supply the community with water.

“What that told us is that we have high-quality natural assets that not only store and filter the water, but require ongoing monitoring,” Machado says.

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  Gibsons chief administrative officer Emanuel Machado says the town of Gibsons decided to increase the price of water.

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  A rainwater catchment system in Robert’s Creek.

The town’s asset management plan was extended to include natural assets like wetlands, rather than looking only at engineered assets like water pipe infrastructure, and it was agreed that everything from the mountaintops down to the coastline should be included with the role of nature considered as a fundamental part of municipal infrastructure.

“It is these assets that we’re going to depend on in the future for our climate resilience and service to communities,” Machado says.

Michelle Lewis, who was hired by Gibsons as “the only natural asset technician in Canada,” has completed an aquifer mapping study which identifies their potential risks.

“Climate change is one that we are going to be modelling even further because we recognize the speed at which the climate is changing and development pressure is another one,” Lewis says.

Michelle Lewis, natural asset technician for the town of Gibsons, and Machado, pose for a photo.

The approach, now being emulated in communities around the world, recognizes the links between cutblocks on the slopes of Mount Elphinstone, which could affect infiltration of the aquifer, to the state of foreshore eelgrass beds.

“What we’re saying is that there’s only one water, whether it’s in the ocean or it’s raining or it’s in the creek and in the aquifer. It’s an interconnected system,” Machado says.

Research has found that rain that falls on top of Mount Elphinstone percolates through the aquifer and takes nine years to get to the primary well in Gibsons.

“It is ultra-filtered. That’s why it is considered one of the world’s best waters,” Machado says. 

A complication is the different jurisdictions that can affect the watershed and Gibsons is working with the Sunshine Coast Regional District, the provincial government, First Nations and private landowners, trying to get everyone on the same page.

One issue is that the town has no control over development in the watershed and some rezonings or complaints about contamination are not even referred to the town by the province, Beamish says.

“We’ve had recent complaints from the public about things going on in the watershed area, particularly with respect to the cement plant and the asphalt storage area, the ministry comes in and investigates and files a report on a public website. There’s no sharing of that information with the town or the [regional district],” Beamish says.

“When you have an investigation of a contaminated site within our watershed, which affects our drinking water, we would like to be informed.”

Gibsons, which is working with the regional district and shishalh and Squamish nations, wants the province to support a regional watershed governance model, possibly under the Water Sustainability Act, which was brought in by the provincial government five years ago. So far, it has barely been implemented and there are no water sustainability plans that have been crafted under the new act.

“The province is slowly coming around, but communities haven’t been empowered in B.C. to collectively govern watersheds,” Machado says.

That is disappointing as, when the legislation was being discussed, it was anticipated there would be at least five plans in place by now and many regions, such as the Sunshine Coast, Cowichan and Skeena urgently need such plans, says Oliver Brandes, co-director of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance.

“The drought has revealed many of the concerns as even the modest tools like critical flow protections or water objectives are not being deployed,” he says.

The province must make it a priority to finish the work it started, Brandes says.

“No water sustainability plans have been started, no water objectives have been set, water licence holders still do not have to account for their water use and groundwater licensing is superficially underway as timelines drag out,” he says.

“Inadequate flows for fish are only getting worse in water-stressed parts of the province, big industrial users are permitted to extract water at virtually no cost and boil water advisories are far too frequent. Communities are feeling water insecure and concerns are mounting.”

Meanwhile, Machado would like to see the Sunshine Coast Regional District adopt some of the same policies and methods that Gibsons has put in place to protect its water.

“Their average resident uses almost three times as much water as our average resident and there’s no justification other than they don’t have a meter, or the right pricing, or that all the leaks have been fixed. Those are the three things they need to do,” he says.

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

Update Sept. 12, 2021 at 9:47 a.m. PT: This article was updated to correct an arithmetic error: the 100 new totes carrying 1,000 litres of water amount to 100,000 litres of new storage and not one million as previously stated in a quote. The quote has been updated to reflect this fact.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and the communities working to implement solutions.

Doug Fossen’s cowboy hat bobs rhythmically as he strides across his family’s ranchland west of Rock Creek, British Columbia. Beneath a large, oval belt buckle bearing his surname, his boots swish through a pasture of green alfalfa. To the right, rows of tightly spaced feed corn stretch uphill towards an open forest of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. 

Abruptly, the sound of his walking changes. Instead of whispering, each footfall crunches, dead grass breaking beneath hard soles, dust and insects beginning to rise in his wake. He stops and points to the parched earth. “See? As soon as you leave our irrigation area you enter grasshopper land,” he tells The Narwhal.

Since the first week of August, the Kettle River watershed, located in central southern B.C., has been under level five drought, the provincial government’s highest rating. According to the B.C. drought information portal, areas assigned level five are “almost certain” to face adverse impacts on socio-economic and ecosystem values. Until recently, the region was the only one listed at level five, but in the past two weeks the Salmon River basin east of Kelowna and both East and West Vancouver Island have joined the extreme rating. 

Doug Fossen, stands on his cattle ranch outside Rock Creek, B.C. Since his father bought the original farmland in 1976, Fossen estimates the family has spent $1 million on irrigation to combat drought but, he adds that because none of their fields are sub-irrigated, “when the creeks dry up, we’re done watering.” Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Fossen walks back to his ATV through the green pasture of an irrigated field. In the background, the Fossen’s latest drought investment can be seen — a centre-pivot irrigation system that, although expensive, conserves water. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Fossen gestures towards a field of private land that borders the Crown land where his cattle graze. On wet years Fossen often wonders if having grazing rights to multi-use government land is worth the headache of dealing with all the people involved. But on drought years like this one, having pasture beyond his own private pastures is vital. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Fossen, who owns 2,300 acres east of Rock Creek, B.C., points to the dry land outside the coverage of his centre-pivot irrigation systems. “As soon as you leave our irrigation area you enter grasshopper land.” Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Since a province-wide heat wave in June, stream flows across the Kettle River watershed’s eight sub-basins have been dangerously low. For cattle ranchers like Fossen, who rely on creeks to irrigate pasture and feed crops, this means making adjustments and praying for rain.

“We’ve consolidated a lot of our irrigated land to conserve water,” he says, adding that they recently installed centre-pivot irrigation systems which, although expensive, use water more efficiently. “It’s just really stressful right now and you’re not sure if you’ll make it.”

According to an Aug. 13 article in the government of Alberta’s Agri-News, severe drought affecting much of Western Canada and the U.S., is leaving ranchers facing tough choices when it comes to managing their herds. A scarcity of feed due to strained, dry pastures has led to increased feed costs forcing many farmers to cull large portions of their stock, which could flood the beef market, lower the price and compound the hardship — something that Fossen is already thinking about.

“Our biggest problem is this fall we’re going to have to deal with a price drop,” he says. “That’ll be our biggest hit.”

Fossen walks towards a pair of cows with their calves on his ranch. During drought years, many ranchers are forced to sell off their herds to avoid buying feed at exorbitant prices, but for Fossen this decision is even more difficult to make as the genetics of their herd date back to 1948. “You can’t replace those genetics and their ability to survive here.” Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  A water trough installed by Fossen on the crown land where he grazes his cattle during the summer months. These troughs take advantage of natural springs and seeps to provide water for his cattle and other wildlife that live in the area. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Fossen’s dog Flint cools down in the runoff from a watering trough Fossen installed on the Crown land where he has grazing rights. Over the past 30 years he estimates he and his family have installed between 40 and 50 of these tanks which utilize natural springs or water seeps to provide water to his cattle herds. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Despite this, Fossen, who serves as the president of the Kettle River Stockman’s Association, considers himself lucky. Since his father bought the ranch in 1976 they have been combating drought by adding seep-fed water troughs on the Crown land where their herd — currently sized at 350 mother cows and their calves — graze between spring and fall. They have also built weirs on some small creeks to create pond-like reservoirs from which they can pump water. Because of this and their irrigation systems they, unlike some other ranchers in the region, may not have to buy feed in the fall at exorbitant prices.

“That’s what ranching teaches us,” he says, “in these drought years we are living off our management decisions of the last 20 years.”

The driveway to the Fossen Ranch leads to a barn built in 1898 when the farm used to provide eggs and vegetables to local miners. In drought years like this, green pasture is a sign of irrigation whereas the brown, dry fields were left to die off as the summer went on. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Fossen’s dogs, Flint and Tuff, run through a field near a plantation of feed corn that will help feed his cattle during the winter months. Despite the drought, Fossen considers himself lucky because he most likely won’t have to buy feed which will see a price increase due to supply shortages caused by the ongoing drought affecting much of western North America. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  A pump house on the Fossen ranch is used to pump water from a reservoir to a centre-pivot irrigation system. Since installing the water-saving systems, Fossen says he has been able to run the pump for only three days a week as opposed to seven which saves both money and water. Even so, the last power bill for one pump house was $4,500. “In a sense, we’re buying feed in a different way,” Fossen says. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  The reservoir created by the Fossens is used to irrigate fields where feed is grown to provide food for cattle during the winter months. It has also become a home to fish, birds, otters and other wildlife and appears as an oasis during years of extreme drought, like this one. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Fossen throws his dog Tuff into a water trough on his ranch east of Rock Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Tuff cools down in a water trough on the Fossen ranch. Beside Tuff, the body of a dead skunk can be seen floating. The skunk presumably drowned after falling into the trough while searching for water. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Fossen fishes the body of the skunk which died after falling into a water trough on his property. In years of drought, the divide between wilderness and ranchland becomes increasingly crossed as wildlife seek out the green pastures of irrigated fields and vital watering holes. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Connecting the dots between clearcuts and drought

According to a drought management plan published by the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary in 2020, the Kettle River watershed is dominated by a “nival hydrological regime,” meaning the watershed relies primarily on snowmelt to sustain the flows of its rivers and streams. This makes the watershed especially susceptible to both flooding and drought as the majority of the yearly flow is released during the spring freshet when the bulk of the snowpack melts. 

In 2018, Grand Forks experienced severe flooding which some residents and industry professionals linked back to excessive clear cut logging in the Boundary timber supply area. Residents of Grand Forks launched a lawsuit against B.C.’s Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources and several logging companies in September 2020 over damages caused by the flooding. The defendants included Interfor, which operates a mill across the Kettle River from downtown Grand Forks.

Piled logs sit in the yard of a mill outside Midway, B.C. The mill is owned by Vaagen Fibre Canada and employs roughly 70 people between Grand Forks and Osoyoos. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

According to Peter Waldmann, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, only one of the companies has filed a defence and the case, which is being overseen by Justice Gaul of the Victoria Registry, is waiting for a case conference to be set. 

In these times of drought, similar connections are being made by people across the region, including ranchers, biologists and retired forestry workers. 

Jamie Haynes, a 70-year-old farmer from Rock Creek who also ranches and runs a small-scale, selective logging company, believes “massive logging” to be one of the biggest issues impacting drought in the region. “The future of our forests is in jeopardy because we’re not managing them properly,” he says. “I know this is off the subject of agriculture, but it’s all connected. It all starts in the watershed.”

Haynes has lived in the region his whole life and now resides on the family land where, in 1907, his grandfather built the existing barn with hand-hewn timbers masterfully erected atop dry-rock masonry. Up until 15 years ago they kept all their cattle on the property but a lowering water table forced them to relocate the herd to lower pastures.

Jamie Haynes is a rancher, selective logger and farmer who has lived in the Boundary region for his entire life. He strongly believes that logging in watersheds throughout the Kettle Basin has affected the hydrology of the landscape and made water levels more susceptible to extreme highs and lows. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Old cars from bygone eras sit on the dry land surrounding the Haynes’ home outside Rock Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

About a decade ago Haynes turned to no-till, regenerative agriculture to help conserve water. This method maintains moisture in the soil because it isn’t being exposed to sun and wind which induces evaporation. He’s also moved to growing more cover crop mixtures that include daikon radishes, triticale, peas and oats. The results have been tangible, especially on dry years like this when water retention in the soil is paramount. 

According to Ray Hanson, a retired forester from Grand Forks who worked for the Ministry of Forests for 32 years, this simple act of water retention, across all parts of a watershed, holds the key to mitigating both drought and flood. 

In an intact watershed, Hanson says, the forest floor is made up of a thick layer of debris called humus which collects over decades or centuries. This layer, along with the root systems of trees and plants, acts like a sponge, soaking up the melting snow before releasing it later, once the initial spring freshet has passed. This not only lessens the effects of spring runoff but also injects a vital source of water to streams and creeks once the heat of summer sets in. 

The other piece that intact forests provide is shade, something that plays a big role in how fast snow accumulates and melts. With healthy forests, drastic temperature swings, like the Kettle Basin experienced in June, are mitigated, again helping to slow runoff.

Haynes stands outside the family barn. He says that drought years are a constant in the Kettle Valley, but admits that he has never seen the Kettle River as low as it is this year. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Dovetailed timbers, hand-hewn by Haynes’ grandfather, make up the structure of the Haynes’ barn which was built in 1907. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

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  An old car sits on the Haynes family land. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

The Haynes’ family land is framed in the doorway of the old barn. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

A few sheep are all that are left of the livestock on Haynes’ home property. As the water table dropped he and his wife were forced to haul water before finally moving their cattle herds to lower pastures 15 years ago. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

The opposite scenario, where a forest fire or intensive logging has decimated the humus layer, leads to increased flow volatility and rapid erosion. “It’s a cumulative effect,” he says. “If you’ve lost the shade and burnt up or disturbed the humus layer too much then the ability of the topography to manage the water is diminished and that’s basically a lot of what the problem is here in the Kettle River drainage.”

In a report published on the provincial government’s website, Rita Winkler, an adjunct professor in the Department of Forest Resource Management at UBC, states that harvesting with large machinery, including skidders and feller-bunchers, “can compact soil surfaces and cause overland flow,” which can then lead to an “increase in the flashiness of streamflow response and the magnitude of surface erosion.” 

The report goes on to note that the “significance of this soil compaction and resulting overland flow depends on the degree of compaction and how much of the watershed area is disturbed.”

When asked about the links between clear cutting and forest hydrology in the Boundary timber supply area, the Ministry of Forests said they were unable to comment due to pending litigation of the class action lawsuit.

Kristina Anderson, who works as the watershed planner for the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, has spent the summer monitoring water levels and temperatures across Kootenay Boundary and compiling weekly drought reports which are made available to residents. What she has been seeing is alarming.

Many creeks and rivers, including the upper West Kettle and Granby River drainages, are breaking new lows and the mean annual discharge — a measurement used to determine the health of fish ecosystems — in most water courses continues to be dangerously low despite recent rain and cooler temperatures. 

Anderson says that people are responding well to municipalities and water suppliers requesting a curtailing of water use, something that isn’t always easy given the agricultural nature of the Kettle River watershed. 

“We’re also in a high to extreme fire season at the moment and I’m very conscious of that,” Anderson says. “I really want to make sure we message water conservation in line with strong fire smart practices.”

Kristina Anderson, watershed planner for the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, sits on the bank of the Kettle River near Grand Forks. Anderson says that residents and officials are in “response mode” but commends the communities of the boundary for working together to minimize water usage during a summer of record-breaking low stream flows across the region. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

A dead black cottonwood lies beached in the middle of the Granby River north of Grand Forks. While erosion of river banks is a natural occurrence, extreme high water events like the flooding that occurred here in 2018, dramatically widen streams and rivers, thus making them more susceptible to high water temperatures during periods of low flows. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Despite this, on August 30 the provincial government issued water restrictions for the West Kettle River watershed limiting water usage for the irrigation of forage. The bulletin states that provincial staff are “monitoring the situation, as well as the protection orders that are in place, and will continue to work to balance water uses with environmental flow needs.”

This delicate balance between industrial use, human need and ecosystem health is becoming increasingly tenuous. For Michael Zimmer, a fisheries biologist who works for the Okanagan Nation Alliance, the core of the issue lies in the relationship between human settlement and something as fluid and changing as a river and its riparian zones.“We like the river,” he says. “We like coming to places like this so we can enjoy the aesthetics, we like floating it with our kayaks and our tubes. But the minute it imposes on us, well we’ve gotta engineer something to control it.”

Michael Zimmer, a fisheries biologist who works for the Okanagan Nation Alliance, stands along the shore of the Kettle River in Grand Forks, B.C. Zimmer says that a chain reaction of effects caused by industry, human settlement, and climate change have imperilled the Kettle River. “If you look at these little bits in isolation they don’t look like much, but if you add them up it’s no surprise that nature is getting stressed.” Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Lynch Creek, a tributary of the Granby River, has run completely dry, as have many of the smaller tributaries in the Kettle Valley watershed, which is experiencing one of its worst drought years on record. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

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  People enjoy the Kettle River just downstream from Grand Forks. The river is a popular place of multi-use recreation, including fishing, tubing and kayaking. However, due to low flows and high water temperatures, fishing has been closed since July 19, 2021. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

Despite record low flows, people enjoy the water of the Granby River north of Grand Forks. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

During the heatwave in June, when air temperatures in Grand Forks reached 48 C for three straight days, water temperatures in the Kettle River spiked to 25 C — a dangerous temperature for the trout that call the river home. This, coupled with low flows, prompted the province to close all streams across the Boundary region to fishing from July 19 to Sept. 15.

Zimmer says that despite being an avid angler, he has rarely fished in the Kettle River since moving to Grand Forks in 1999 because he knows how hard it is for fish to make it in the struggling waterway. “Knowing that the trout are in trouble — knowing that they’re struggling just to survive — makes putting them through more stress unappealing to me.”

Anderson says that one of the major concerns with the river is the “really, really high water temperature.” Shade from overhead vegetation can be an important factor in offsetting that relationship between air temperature and water temperature, she says. But much of the riparian area (the often-lush, transitional zones between water and land) surrounding the river have been degraded or destroyed.

In an emailed response to The Narwhal, the Ministry of Forests accredited the Kettle’s warm temperatures in part to high ambient air temperatures, especially overnight, which “give fish little reprieve.”

People float down the slow-moving waters of the Kettle River just west of Grand Forks. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Bringing back the riparian

Near the banks of the Granby River, a half hour’s drive north of Grand Forks, tall black cottonwoods rise from a green understory, thick with dogwood, ferns, tall grasses and a myriad of other plant life. A kingfisher appears as a streak of blue, landing for a moment on the outstretched branch of a cedar tree, before returning back to the river’s edge. The air here is cool and the soft, moist earth seems worlds apart from the dusty farmland found only a stone’s throw away. 

For Jenny Coleshill, a biologist who coordinates projects for the Granby Wilderness Society, the unique ecosystems found in riparian areas make an important contribution when it comes to limiting the impacts of both droughts and floods.

“Riparian areas help shade the river and provide a lot of both habitat and ecosystem services,” Coleshill says, adding that they can also be a source for seeds and propagation following severe drought and fire events.

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  Biologist Jenny Coleshill stands in a black cottonwood riparian ecosystem near the Granby River north of Grand Forks. Coleshill, who is the project coordinator for the Granby Wilderness Society, believes riparian areas provide a key in battling both flooding and drought. “You can just walk along in a riparian area and underneath the trees it’s all green,” she says. “They help shade the river and provide a lot of habitat and ecosystem services.” Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

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  A young boy jumps off a bridge into the Granby River. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

According to Coleshill — much like an intact forest higher up in the watershed — low-elevation riparian zones act as buffers between water and land, soaking up water during times of high flow and protecting against floods. Those same zones then release that stored water later in the year, offering much-needed, cooled groundwater to summer streams suffering from low flows and high temperatures. 

But even beyond their ability to help regulate flood and drought, for Coleshill, the foremost benefit of healthy riparian zones is habitat. 

The Kettle River as seen from a bridge near Grand Forks. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

“Seventy-five per cent of birds in western North America use riparian areas for nesting and over 90 per cent of vertebrates use them at some point in their lifecycle,” she says. “They’re used as travel corridors for animals and they protect our waterways by filtering out bad pollutants, dust and agricultural runoffs.”

Coleshill believes that a lack of regulations governing riparian areas in the Kettle River watershed, coupled with a lack of understanding regarding their ecological importance, has led to a regional history of these areas being damaged or altered. Farmers, who prize low-lying, damp soil clear out riparian zones; cattle trample understories in their search for water and shade; developers wipe them out to create desirable housing near waterways; and settlers of all stripes manipulate them in an effort to control water, whether in the name of agriculture, personal use or safety. 

In a riparian threat assessment report that Coleshill co-authored for the Granby Wilderness Society, she performed a historical comparison to showcase the extent of riparian loss in the region. In the city of Grand Forks, it was found that there had been a 50 per cent loss of vegetation within 100 metres of the river — a loss Anderson believes has a negative impact on waterways during times of flood and drought. 

And there’s indication that damaged riparian zones can and should be brought back to life. Research published in Ecohydrology in 2018 found that riparian areas disturbed due to cattle ranching could be successfully restored. Researchers Emily Fairfax and Eric Small from the University of Colorado Boulder, used remote sensing to monitor two creeks in Nevada and found reestablished riparian areas were repopulated by beavers, which, in turn, contributed to water retention. This eventually led to resilient, moist areas that provided oases of habitat in an otherwise arid landscape.

Signs of erosion mark the banks of the Kettle River. Because of the encroachment of human settlement and agriculture, erosion like this leads to a loss in riparian areas that aren’t able to be replaced by trees farther back from the water’s edge. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

“Your intact riparian ecosystem helps with erosion as well as water temperature,” Anderson says. “If you have channels with overhead vegetation you’re able to moderate heat spells like the one we had earlier in June.”

These effects on water temperature and fish habitat are subtle and cumulative, Zimmer says, which makes them difficult to pin down. “It’s not an instantaneous thing but rather what they call a continuum. You can’t point to a certain spot and say ‘Oh, I know exactly what the impact is right here.’ It’s all these cumulative things that happen along the way.”

Yet in this continuum Zimmer also sees a solution, one that Coleshill and others have been working on for years. 

“All the problems are stretched out,” he says. “But if you do the reverse and you do little projects here and there, working your way upstream, then you can reestablish those riparian areas.”

Although replanting cottonwoods and native plant species might seem like a simple task Coleshill says it is both challenging and expensive. Naturally sandy soil makes erosion common and white-tail deer, which followed agriculture into the Boundary in the 1920s, feed on small cottonwood shoots, making it almost impossible to replant them without human protection.

Despite this Coleshill and her colleagues at the Granby Wilderness Society have been working with local farmers, ranchers, and residents to establish areas of regrowth. “We’ve probably got 20 landowners across the Boundary that are working on restoration with us on their properties,” she says, adding that she believes riparian projects are the biggest bang for your buck and, as a bonus, they aren’t controversial. “No one can get mad at us or tell us we’re bad for planting trees.”

Sitting in Grand Forks’ City Park, near an informative sign explaining the importance of riparian areas, Zimmer commends those taking these difficult steps towards restoration. “It’s important to do this riparian work because, the alternative is, that we write off this river completely.”

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  White-tailed deer graze on the green grass of City Park in downtown Grand Forks. The species followed agriculture to the area in the 1920s and have since exploded in population, becoming a common fixture across neighbourhoods and downtown streets. They also impact riparian zones by eating new growth, making it nearly impossible to replant the areas without human protection. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Sprinklers water a lawn at dawn in Grand Forks. While municipalities and water suppliers have made advisories asking residents to curtail water use, there are no firm regulations in place. Photo by Louis Bockner/The Narwhal

‘People don’t notice the little things’

Near the Sand Creek watershed to the northwest of Grand Forks, Dieter Bay walks through a cutblock. Stooping to the ground, he examines a brown, larch seedling planted this spring and shakes his head. This is the second time the block has been planted and with the heatwave, the drought and a lack of overstory to protect these fragile trees, they hardly stood a chance. Bay sighs, slowly rises and continues walking. 

Bay, who worked as a landscaper for 30 years, lives with his wife Elizabeth near the lower banks of Sand Creek where it enters the Granby River. They operate a modest, 1.5 acre permaculture market garden and supply a local food co-op with fruits and vegetables, including grapes, apples, raspberries and peaches.

Dieter Bay walks through a cut block that was logged in 2016 above his home near Grand Forks. Bay believes forestry operations need to retain larger amounts of trees in order to protect understory plant life, biodiversity and hydrological systems. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  Bay points to a clear cut in the Sand Creek watershed, the same watershed that provides the groundwater for his and his wife’s well. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

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  “It just makes me cry,” Bay says in regards to the clearcutting he sees throughout the Kettle Basin’s watersheds. “It’s criminal negligence. It’s greed. It’s money.” Photo Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Bay checks on seedlings in a cutblock above his home. The block, which was logged in 2016 has since been planted twice because the seedlings planted first died off. Bay doesn’t believe many of the trees planted this spring will survive due to the heatwave, drought and a lack of shade. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

With five more cutblocks slated for the Sand Creek watershed, Bay worries for his water source, a well that draws from the same water table that Sand Creek feeds. But more than that, he is deeply concerned about natural ecosystems as a whole and what global losses of habitat and biodiversity means for people and the planet. 

“What worries me is that people don’t notice the little things,” he says. “It’s like the whole world is a symphony and if one violinist stops playing nobody notices. But if 50 violinists stop, then all of a sudden it doesn’t sound the same anymore. If you look at it as a net of life, the holes get bigger and bigger with every species disappearing.”

Bay in his market garden and orchard on his property outside Grand Forks. In many ways his garden, guided by permaculture principles, is a response to the loss of diversity he sees occurring across the planet. “I’m creating diversity,” he says, adding that he doesn’t “mind the jungle.” Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Bay washes a carrot in his 1.5 acre market garden and orchard. Along with his wife Elizabeth, Bay supplies a local food co-op with fruit and produce and believe in planting not just for food but also for the natural world. “I plant a lot of stuff just for the bees,” Bay says. “There’s so many unexpected things that I find when I walk in here.” Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Bay inspects an apple tree in his orchard. An early frost, followed by hail and the June heatwave has left much of this year’s crop damaged or stunted. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Originally from Germany, Bay has experienced this species loss first hand and worries that Canada, known for its wilderness, wildlife and freshwater is slowly following suit.

“That kind of scenario worries me a lot because it’s almost undetectable,” he says. “The forest relies on a healthy water table and we rely on a healthy forest. It’s all connected. It’s that simple.”

To the Syilx Okanagan people, whose traditional territory includes the Kettle basin, this connection to water — or siwɬkʷ — is everything. Siwɬkʷ in nsyilxcən, the language spoken by the Syilx Okanagan, translates into “humans and animals lapping water equally.” To Tessa Terbasket, a member of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band who works for the Okanagan Nation Alliance in natural resources, this is a clear indication that water needs to be respected and kept healthy.

“I think one of the biggest challenges in our work is to try and get others to see that water is a living entity and not just a resource that we can control,” she says. “It’s for all life and we’re only a small piece of that.”

She also sees years like this, when water is scarce, as an opportunity to spark change and raise awareness around its use and conservation. “In times of drought you really see what water brings and that it’s really the essence of all life,’ she says. “There’s just so much to be learned and I think youth awareness and more water outreach in our education system is a good place to start enhancing [our] relationship with water.”

Back in Grand Forks, Zimmer glances out at the low, slow-moving water of the Kettle River. 

“All the things that are happening here,” he says, “whether it’s medicines, things you can eat, or water you can drink, is our responsibility to take care of so it’s always there for generations, not just right now.”

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This story is part of When in Drought, a series about threats to B.C.’s imperilled freshwater systems and the communities working to implement solutions.

Coho salmon were on track to have a good year in the Tsolum River, which merges with the Puntledge River near Courtenay, B.C., on the east coast of Vancouver Island.

Then came the heatwave and drought. 

“The numbers were so good before the heat came. It was a particularly good year,” says biologist Caroline Heim, the program coordinator of the Tsolum River Restoration Society.

Between June 26 and 29, the community restoration group observed coho fry swarming in massive numbers at cool groundwater upwelling “refugia” sites where water temperatures were up to 15 C cooler than the general river temperature — which climbed as high as 29 C during that time. Within that period — during which the hottest temperature ever in Canada was recorded in Lytton, B.C. — the group also observed a significant coho die-off.

“​​It’s hard to quantify how many died. A conservative estimate would be at least half, but probably much more than that,” says Heim. “It’s pretty dire.”

The Tsolum River is part of the East Vancouver Island Basin, a region experiencing a severe drought caused by low spring precipitation and record-high temperatures. 

On Friday, the province increased the drought severity on Vancouver Island to level five, the most intense drought rating possible. Under level five drought conditions, adverse impacts on socio-economic or ecosystem values are “almost guaranteed,” according to the B.C. drought information portal.

The Tsolum River on eastern Vancouver Island recorded temperatures of 29 C during B.C.’s heat dome in late June. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The province declared significant drought conditions across B.C. on July 9, noting that “adverse impacts on fish have been observed” due to elevated water temperatures, low flow conditions and reduced water availability. The public is being urged to conserve water.

Since the initial June to July heatwave shocked the Pacific Northwest, Heim says the Tsolum River Restoration Society has observed significantly fewer fish in the river, especially in its lower portions. Many of the remaining coho, which survived the heat wave, are suffering from diseases and fin rot as a result of heat stress, she adds.

Now that pink salmon are beginning to run in the Tsolum, Heim says the restoration group will monitor for signs of early fatalities, which may occur before the fish get a chance to spawn, as brutal regional heat and drought conditions persist.

Such tough conditions aren’t limited to the Tsolum, however.

On eastern Vancouver Island, watersheds of special concern in the ongoing drought include Sandhill Creek, Koksilah River, Chemainus River, Millstone River, Tsolum River, Black Creek as well as areas in the Gulf Islands.

Decreasing flows, losing habitat and warming Vancouver Island waters

While there are other regions in central and southern B.C. also in the grips of drought, watersheds on eastern Vancouver Island are particularly sensitive to prolonged dry conditions because the region’s salmon streams are relatively short and small, explains biologist Tanis Gower, science and policy advisor for Watershed Watch Salmon Society. 

Low stream flows naturally occur in small rivers on eastern Vancouver Island during the summer months when precipitation is scarce, but increasing drought and extreme heat patterns are further reducing summer stream flows — often coinciding with migration and spawning cycles, key stages in life of salmon that are crucial for survival.

While some rivers may once have relied on glacial snowpack melt to keep water flowing in a typical summer, climate change is shrinking glaciers, creating smaller winter snowpacks that melt earlier and keep stream flows low.

Low stream flows and drier rivers can restrict salmon habitat availability, de-water critical riffle and side channel habitat, leave fish vulnerable to predators and prevent adult salmon from migrating to their spawning grounds.

Low stream flows can also heat up water temperature beyond the liveable range for salmon, further stressing the fish, Gower says.

Streams on eastern Vancouver Island have experienced increasing patterns of heat and drought conditions in recent summers. 

Coho salmon fry are rescued by volunteers during a perilously dry Cowichan River in the summer of 2015. Photo: Cowichan Lake and River Stewardship Society / Facebook

Ron Ptolemy, river biologist and streams and flow specialist with the province’s Ministry of Environment, says droughts are starting earlier and lasting longer. 

“We have streams that now go regularly dry, which is not a good theme for fish,” he says. “There is a direct negative impact on what number of fish can be produced.”

This year, Ptolemy observed “exceedingly low” stream flows in rivers on eastern Vancouver Island. 

Coupled with extreme heat conditions, the impacts are tangible. 

Ptolemy cites a massive fish die-off in the Quinsam River, which feeds the Campbell River, in part due to low flows and stream temperatures reaching as high as 29 C. At the Cowichan River, a larger stream that flows from Cowichan Lake to Cowichan Bay, Ptolemy says he observed many fish with poor bodily conditions.

The Cowichan Valley: ‘We’re not waiting for climate change. It’s already here’

Vancouver Island’s famed Cowichan Valley boasts having one of Canada’s only “maritime Mediterranean climatic zone.” The valley, which extends from Mill Bay, just north of Victoria, to Ladysmith, just south of Nanaimo, is also known for having the warmest year–round temperatures in the country.

The valley’s two main rivers, the Cowichan River and the Koksilah River, have already been hit hard by the impacts of climate change.

Climate projections for the Cowichan Valley predict hotter and longer summers and less summer rain. The analysis found the number of summer days above 25 C may more than double from the current average of 16 days per year to 39 days per year by the 2050s. 

Residents say they’re already seeing the effects of hotter, dryer weather firsthand. 

Debra Toporowski, a board member for the Cowichan Watershed Board and a councillor with Cowichan Tribes, says salmon populations in the watershed have drastically decreased in her lifetime.

But in conversations she’s had with Elders, she’s learned the changes to salmon populations are even more drastic than her personal observations.

“The Elders of our time have mentioned it was so full of salmon, you could walk on the backs of the fish to get to the other side of the river, basically. It was so packed. There was nothing but salmon,” she says.

Extreme heat and drought conditions, expected to become the new normal, are amplifying threats to salmon by drying and warming critical habitat.

“We’re not waiting for climate change. It’s already here,” says Tom Rutherford, Cowichan Valley resident and executive director of the Cowichan Watershed Board. 

Tom Rutherford resident of the Koksilah Watershed and executive director of Cowichan Watershed Board. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

The headwaters of the Cowichan River are located in Lake Cowichan, and since 1951 a weir system has been used to ensure the river is fed a steady supply of water. But in recent years, lower water flows and less precipitation have meant more water users along the Cowichan are vying for a limited water supply. In late 2020 the federal government put $24.2 million into a seven-year program, led by Cowichan Tribes in partnership with the Cowichan Watershed Board, to help restore the Cowichan watershed.

As part of that restoration program, the aging weir will be replaced with a new structure, 70 centimetres higher than the current weir, allowing more water to be stored and released during the summer droughts.

But for the Koksilah River, finding solutions to low water flow is much more difficult. The Koksilah watershed’s water is stored in wetlands, a handful of small lakes and underground aquifers. Because the Koksilah isn’t fed by a single large body of water, the river relies on rain and snowmelt from the mountains. 

Whitewater kayaking along the Koksilah River, which experiences high water volumes in the rainy fall and very low water flows in the hot summer. Both high and low water flows in the Koksilah can be perilous for salmon. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

And climate change projections for the Cowichan Valley suggest the region can anticipate more extreme weather events, especially more rain in the non-summer months, which can lead to flash floods that can wipe out spawning habitat for salmon. Overall, salmon are being impacted by weather events on both sides of the flood and drought extremes.

The Koksilah relies on the inflow of groundwater, the cooling water of which can be essential for salmon survival during the hottest months of the year. But the majority of water extracted from the Koksilah watershed is drawn from groundwater, which has come under significant strain from growing farms, forestry, recreational businesses and rural development. A 2018 study conducted by the Watershed Watch Salmon Society found that 70 per cent of water used in the Koksilah watershed is well water drawn from aquifers. 

Now as the region’s water reserves are depleting, even deep wells are beginning to run dry. Tests show some aquifer levels have dropped by 30 metres, signaling deep trouble for salmon.

How to heal a river

A new era of watershed planning for B.C.

Two summers ago, B.C. issued an emergency fish population protection order for the Koksilah that required specific water users to cease all use for nearly two months to protect fish populations under threat.

At the time of that emergency order, almost exactly two years ago, the province stated that ministry biologists “determined that current flow levels are so low that habitat conditions are severely degraded and fish populations may be threatened.”

It was the first year that flows became so dangerously low in the Koksilah that volunteer efforts were not enough to prevent the province from stepping in to revoke licenced water holders’ right to use water.

Rutherford of the Cowichan Watershed Board says those restrictions cost the Cowichan community tens of thousands of dollars.

Since then, the community has come up with new solutions, Rutherford says. Both this and last summer, farmers have divided into two cohorts which alternate irrigation periods to halve agricultural water use and preserve crops. 

“That’s the kind of innovative solution that we need,” Rutherford tells The Narwhal. “Our water flows aren’t falling as low this year as they did in 2019, even though it’s drier because we’ve come up with a strategy to address environmental concerns and still meet some [farming] production needs.”

Community members, stakeholders and government representatives are collaborating to develop watershed-specific solutions for the Cowichan/Koksilah watershed.

A local pulp and paper mill operates the licenced weir at Cowichan Lake and is working with the community to release more water during summer droughts.

Catalyst Paper holds the water licence for the weir at the junction of Cowichan Lake and Cowichan River. The Catalyst Mill in Crofton, B.C., is a major employer in the Cowichan Valley and Catalyst is working with community members to address water shortages due to climate change. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

And the Koksilah River is at the helm of the province’s first-ever water sustainability plan. Signed by the Cowichan Tribes and the province, the emerging plan could restore some of the Koksilah’s ecosystems and salmon integrity while setting an example of collaborative watershed security for the entire province. 

The success of the river’s plan hinges on the willingness of community members and stakeholders with diverse water interests to work together, Rutherford says. Without this kind of action the salmon will continue suffering devastating declines as extreme climate events increase in frequency, he adds.

“We’re on a trajectory that’s going to make it really hard for some species of salmon to survive where they have for millennia.”

What can B.C. do about drought and water scarcity?

Both the Koksilah water sustainability plan and the river’s 2019 emergency water cut-off were made possible under B.C.’s fairly new Water Sustainability Act — legislation introduced in 2016 to replace the province’s century-old water rules. 

The new water act aims to shift the priorities of the province’s water management scheme from centring economic interests to protecting water for current and future generations.

Water experts and advocates say the new legislation was much needed because 63 per cent of British Columbians live in water-stressed areas.

The legislation opens up new opportunities to address drought and water scarcity in the province from the watershed level. In practice, experts say that could mean ensuring enough water is available in the system and conserving water during the summer, with built-in flexibility to respond with water allocations during emergencies. The key, they say, is ensuring watershed management is adaptive with climate change, rather than reactionary to climate change events.

But experts say implementation has been slow, despite some progress on the Cowichan/Koksilah watershed.

“A first immediate priority for government is finishing the work of the Water Sustainability Act, which is now over five years old and only barely implemented,” wrote Oliver Brandes, co-director of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, in an op-ed from earlier this year.

“The Act urgently needs to be moved from ‘good ideas on paper’ to action to protect lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers across the province. This starts by finishing the long-promised groundwater licensing and water planning and flow protection that better balances water for nature, fish and communities.”

The province’s Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development did not provide a response to The Narwhal before publication.

Experts and advocates alike say the Water Sustainability Act could protect wild salmon and watersheds, and are pushing the province to boost support and funding for more watershed-specific water sustainability plans to address water conflicts and to commit to licencing and regulating groundwater extraction, the deadline for which has already been delayed once.

Gower of Watershed Watch Salmon Society points to the collaboration and restoration planning underway in the Koksilah River as an example of a meaningful way forward.

“That is really how we’re going to address the conflicts between fish and humans that are being made so much worse right now by climate change,” she says.

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.