Let’s not drop the ball on drought preparedness
July 2, 2024
By: Meghan Rooney
This year is looking a bit different than this time in 2023 when the province was holding press conferences calling on the public to take shorter showers in response to severe, widespread drought. Despite an alarmingly low snowpack, conditions heading into summer are not as severe this year for most of the province. But they’re not great.
A look at the current snowpack and drought conditions make it clear we should not get complacent about drought this summer.
B.C. Drought Map. At the end of June, only one area of the province – the northwest – had sufficient water to meet needs. The South and East Peace regions were already at Drought Level 4 out of 5.
Snowpack
Think of B.C.’s snowpacks as our fresh water savings account. Snow accumulates in the fall and winter, and our savings increase. Come late spring, snow begins to melt and our snowpack savings account starts to deplete as snow melt enters rivers and streams. This snowmelt keeps our waterways flowing and cool, which is important for all water users but particularly important for salmon, who need cool, clean, well-oxygenated waters to live.
B.C.’s last snowpack report for the year was released on June 20. Between the 1st and 15th, the provincial average snowpack dropped from 50 percent of normal to 38 per cent of normal for this time of year. (For reference, this time last year it was at 4 per cent of normal.)
However, that 38 per cent, while significantly less than average, fails to capture how variable conditions are in different regions of the province. South Coast, Vancouver Island, Central Coast, Okanagan, Similkameen, Boundary and Peace basins are all less than 18 per cent of normal. Meanwhile Kootenay, Stikine and Upper Fraser East and Columbia basins are all above 50 per cent of normal. The Fraser basin matches the provincial average at 38 per cent.
Drought
A cool, wet end to spring led to a reduction in drought levels for most regions of B.C. A notable exception is the Peace Region, where severe drought has continued to persist since last year.
Since most of our basins don’t have enough remaining snowpack, we’re more dependent on rainfall to stave off increasing drought risk. Luckily, in many regions we’re now getting some of the rain we didn’t see in the spring. If we see extended periods of dry, hot weather, we will see drought levels start to increase across the province.
This could be particularly bad if we see drought levels increase and persist into the fall as they did in 2023, which delayed migration for returning spawning salmon.
Preparing for drought
While the province took some proactive steps this spring in anticipation of another bad year of drought, there’s much more that could be done.
We worry that a couple of weeks of cool weather and rain has made the government feel like the pressure is off, and they’ve done their job. They have not. Now is the time to take additional action – before drought risk increases. If it doesn’t, then we’re ahead of the game for next year.
Action means more funding to support B.C.’s Watershed Security Fund to restore our natural defences. It also means implementing fish protection orders proactively to protect at-risk salmon and steelhead populations. And it means ensuring that industrial water users are not taking more than their fair share of water – especially during times of drought – and punishing them appropriately if they are.
This is far from an exhaustive list but these are some of the important steps government can take now to better defend wild salmon from another year of drought.
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Let’s not drop the ball on drought preparedness
July 2, 2024
By: Meghan Rooney
This year is looking a bit different than this time in 2023 when the province was holding press conferences calling on the public to take shorter showers in response to severe, widespread drought. Despite an alarmingly low snowpack, conditions heading into summer are not as severe this year for most of the province. But they’re not great.
A look at the current snowpack and drought conditions make it clear we should not get complacent about drought this summer.
B.C. Drought Map. At the end of June, only one area of the province – the northwest – had sufficient water to meet needs. The South and East Peace regions were already at Drought Level 4 out of 5.
Snowpack
Think of B.C.’s snowpacks as our fresh water savings account. Snow accumulates in the fall and winter, and our savings increase. Come late spring, snow begins to melt and our snowpack savings account starts to deplete as snow melt enters rivers and streams. This snowmelt keeps our waterways flowing and cool, which is important for all water users but particularly important for salmon, who need cool, clean, well-oxygenated waters to live.
B.C.’s last snowpack report for the year was released on June 20. Between the 1st and 15th, the provincial average snowpack dropped from 50 percent of normal to 38 per cent of normal for this time of year. (For reference, this time last year it was at 4 per cent of normal.)
However, that 38 per cent, while significantly less than average, fails to capture how variable conditions are in different regions of the province. South Coast, Vancouver Island, Central Coast, Okanagan, Similkameen, Boundary and Peace basins are all less than 18 per cent of normal. Meanwhile Kootenay, Stikine and Upper Fraser East and Columbia basins are all above 50 per cent of normal. The Fraser basin matches the provincial average at 38 per cent.
Drought
A cool, wet end to spring led to a reduction in drought levels for most regions of B.C. A notable exception is the Peace Region, where severe drought has continued to persist since last year.
Since most of our basins don’t have enough remaining snowpack, we’re more dependent on rainfall to stave off increasing drought risk. Luckily, in many regions we’re now getting some of the rain we didn’t see in the spring. If we see extended periods of dry, hot weather, we will see drought levels start to increase across the province.
This could be particularly bad if we see drought levels increase and persist into the fall as they did in 2023, which delayed migration for returning spawning salmon.
Preparing for drought
While the province took some proactive steps this spring in anticipation of another bad year of drought, there’s much more that could be done.
We worry that a couple of weeks of cool weather and rain has made the government feel like the pressure is off, and they’ve done their job. They have not. Now is the time to take additional action – before drought risk increases. If it doesn’t, then we’re ahead of the game for next year.
Action means more funding to support B.C.’s Watershed Security Fund to restore our natural defences. It also means implementing fish protection orders proactively to protect at-risk salmon and steelhead populations. And it means ensuring that industrial water users are not taking more than their fair share of water – especially during times of drought – and punishing them appropriately if they are.
This is far from an exhaustive list but these are some of the important steps government can take now to better defend wild salmon from another year of drought.
What BC has is not a water shortage issue , WE have a water storge issue as our resevoirs are old and designed for half of the population we have today . We need to increase our storage capoacity , bring on new pipelines to Harrison Lake and increase the heights of several of our existing resevoirs . We lose a lot of water each day because our resevoirs have insufficient capacity plus each decade they are silting up , there needs to be a plan to remove the accumulated mud and debris from the bottom of our dams to ensure we are storing water and not mud .
Approximately 63% of B.C.’s population (2.9 million people) live in water-stressed areas. You can check out our Tapped out report to learn more. https://watershedwatch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-09-24-Tapped-Out-RGB.pdf
We do not currently have a good understanding of our water use and needs in BC, not just in terms of residential use but use by industrial and agriculture and minimum flow requirements for fish and wildlife. Improving water storage in some regions might be part of the solution but each watershed is different. MetroVancouver and the Greater Victoria area regions are fortunate to have large, protected reservoirs to provide drinking water but other communities in B.C. do not have the same protections for their drinking water sources and would not be feasible locations to build reservoirs. We can increase our ability to store water but we also need to reduce water waste – some industrial water users use as much water as some municipalities. Beyond water needs for residents we also need to consider enviromental flows for salmon and other species and fish passage that would be impacted by water storage infrastructure. Lastly, by investing in watershed security, rebuilding wetlands and restoring forest complexity or riparian areas, we are creating natural water storage on the land that doesn’t have high costs and maintenance required like built infrastructure does.
we need to diversify our water storage policies at a municipal and district level. in our Cities; “daylighting” streams historically diverted into storm sewers, storm retention alterations to our hard-surfaces (roads and parking lots).
In our forests and TFLs (trees farm licences) science driven changes to policy leaving large woody debris (LWD) in places of importance to fish, LWD provides shaed cooling in river and creek bottoms and assists the natural formation of spawning beds.
We have the Science, We have the Foresters, We need to focus on Salmon Revovery strategies