Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
John Barker has been volunteering with the West Vancouver Streamkeeper Society for more than 20 years and says he's never seen anything like it, dozens of coho salmon, pre-spawn and silvery, looking fresh from the sea, dead at the mouth of Brothers Creek. "When you have a loss like this, it's devastating,'' said Barker.
A federally funded research project is underway to find out if B.C. and Alberta are at risk of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF) due to climate change. The Weather Network's Connor O'Donavon has more on why GLOF represents a major hazard and how it can result in significant loss of life. Picture a wall of water suddenly rushing down a mountain valley towards you, giving you just seconds to react. That’s just what happened in 2012 at Mount Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park when the hanging Ghost Glacier fell into the glacial lake below.
Two years ago, what would soon become a historic atmospheric river made landfall in B.C. as nearly a month's worth of rain pounded down on the province in less than 48 hours. Over a terrifying few days, mass evacuations were ordered, thousands of animals were lost, and homes were flooded to their upper levels. Every highway connecting the Lower Mainland to the rest of the province was badly damaged or destroyed.
Biologists are lending a helping hand to salmon in the B.C. interior that are struggling to make it to their spawning grounds due to severe drought conditions. Jason Hwang, vice-president of salmon with the Pacific Salmon Foundation, has joined Sarah Ostoforoff, a habitat restoration biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, at Kamloops Lake to reconnect it with Tranquille Creek so pink salmon currently trapped in the lake can start their spawning journey.
"We have groundwater levels dropping dramatically. We have river levels that are very, very low," said Tom Pypker, chair of the department of natural resource sciences at Thompson Rivers University. "This has implications for farmers who need to extract water to irrigate their crops. This has implications for cities that need to draw water out of these surface water bodies to supply their population."
A trailer park resident in northeast B.C. says her landlord and the regional health authority have failed to address high levels of manganese in the water supply for more than three years — and the problem still hasn't been fixed. Cassandra Ross says she didn't even learn of the issues with the drinking water at Shady Acres Mobile Home Park until a boil water advisory was put in place for high bacteria levels more than two years after the manganese issue was found.
In July, three years after Cowichan Valley farmer Katy Ehrlich applied to get her farm's well licensed, provincial officials visited her farm. "They had an order with them that said that we had to stop diverting groundwater for commercial purposes. And we were like shocked," said Ehrlich, who had thought everything was fine with her application for a non-domestic groundwater licence, a requirement under the B.C. Water Sustainability Act (WSA).
Experts say the extent to which wildfires have burned across the province this year will have serious implications for the quality of B.C.’s watersheds and the ecosystems that rely on them. John Richardson, a Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences professor at the University of British Columbia, says with so many hillsides scorched by wildfires this year, there’s nothing to prevent incoming rain from creating a “debris torrent” — something which spells bad news for the province’s drinking water.
Parts of the province are seeing unprecedented lack or rainfall and low streamflow levels, according to the latest wildfire and drought update from the provincial government. A majority of sites in the province are measuring an extremely low percentile of their usual levels. "On the streamflow side of things, somewhere in the order of [a little less than] one-third of the stations across the province are at record-low flow," River Forecast Centre head Dave Campbell told reporters at a news conference Thursday.
As the province’s drought reaches historical levels, British Columbians are being urged to do their part to conserve water. The minister of emergency management and climate readiness, Bowinn Ma, has called on residents, farmers, businesspeople and industrial plant operators to take urgent steps to cut water use. She highlighted a report from B.C.’s River Forecast Centre that said the combination of record heat in May followed by early snow melt and persistently low levels of rain have created severe drought.
The recent decision to reactivate several Vancouver-owned fountains that use millions of litres of drinking water annually is being scrutinized as B.C. officials sound the alarm about worsening drought conditions across the province. The five fountains are not capable of recirculating water, meaning that water is pumped in, used once and flushed into the sewer – something Park Board Commissioner Tom Digby considers wasteful.
British Columbia has ordered the oil and gas industry to temporarily stop diverting water to operations in one northeast district, and is now considering banning water use by other industries in other parts of the province, as it tries to conserve resources for its fight against the twin crises of drought and wildfires. At a news conference in Vancouver on Thursday, government officials explained that B.C.’s government is also working with municipalities, regional districts and First Nations to escalate restrictions on personal water usage.
A First Nation on Vancouver Island has been legally barred from accessing one of its primary traditional food sources for the past 25 years, one of 154 shellfish harvesting sites closed by federal law in B.C. due to poor water quality. Some of those sites may be safe at times, a recent audit concluded, but they cannot be reopened because the federal agency in charge of testing those waters is understaffed. As a result, it devotes the majority of its limited resources to commercial harvesting areas. Shellfish beds First Nations have relied on for as long as their people have existed haven’t been given such high priority.
The British Columbia government is urging people to save water, saying the forecast predicts drought across much of the province this summer. A statement from the Forests Ministry says recent rains have provided some relief in parts of B.C., but it hasn't been enough to make up the deficit. B.C.'s drought map shows much of the northeastern corner of the province is at drought level four on the five-level scale, meaning conditions are extremely dry, with communities and ecosystems likely to experience adverse impacts.
The Tsawout First Nation, located 20 kilometres north of Victoria, B.C., has declared an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) for 155 kilometres of ocean in its traditional waters. The area will be called QEN'T Marine Protected Area. QEN'T — pronounced "qwant" — means "to be looking after," "caring for," or "protecting something or someone" in SENĆOŦEN.
Washington state officials and farmers are calling on the British Columbia government to act on water quality reports that show large amounts of bacteria are flowing from north of the border into the Nooksack River watershed. They say high levels of fecal coliform — of which E. coli is a subgroup — are flowing from a Fraser Valley creek into Pepin Creek in Washington before entering the Nooksack, which empties into the sea near shellfish beds owned by the Lummi Nation.
A local First Nation says it's "disappointed" Teck Coal is seeking to reduce the $16 million in fines it was assessed by the B.C. Ministry of Environment in January for polluting waterways in B.C.'s East Kootenay. In January, the province imposed three administrative penalties on Teck Coal Limited, a subsidiary of Teck Resources, citing the company's failure to have water treatment facilities ready by a required date.
Canada's spy agency says climate change is threatening the nation's prosperity and security, and has identified British Columbia as a region of particular concern. A newly released analysis by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that was prepared in April 2021 and only recently disclosed to The Canadian Press spells out several concerns presented by global warming.
Living Lakes Canada is celebrating the BC Government’s decision to invest a historic $100 million into safeguarding the province’s watersheds. This unprecedented investment, announced as part of Budget 2023, will go towards the establishment of a long-term Watershed Security Fund that will be co-managed by B.C. First Nations and support communities to increase their adaptation options in anticipation of continuing climate change impacts. “Living Lakes Canada applauds the provincial government for taking this concrete step forward in watershed protection for the province,” said Kat Hartwig, Executive Director of Living Lakes Canada.
