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.
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.
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.
High streamflow advisories have been issued for two more regions as heavy rain sweeps over British Columbia’s southern Interior. B.C.’s River Forecast Centre added the advisories for the Similkameen and Okanagan regions after previously issuing bulletins for all of Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and Metro Vancouver through to the Fraser Valley.
A First Nation in British Columbia will receive a boost from the province for shoreline stabilization, with the chief saying it is under consistent threat of flooding. The $5 million aimed at so-called riprap erosion control measures is going to the Sqwa First Nation, Shxwha:y Village and the City of Chilliwack. The announcement comes a week after the province provided $23.4 million in funding to 49 communities to help reduce risks from future disasters related to natural hazards and climate change, including $150,000 for a drainage pump station upgrade design in Chilliwack.
British Columbia's public safety minister was in Abbotsford Thursday nearly a year after the area was hit by catastrophic flooding. Mike Farnworth said progress has been made rebuilding critical infrastructure on the Sumas Prairie and in parts of the Fraser Valley following last year's atmospheric river. Farnworth said permanent repairs to the Sumas River dike are expected to be completed by the end of the month.
Farmer Richard Bosma points to an armpit-level felt pen mark on the wall of his milking barn to show how high the water rose during the catastrophic flooding on his Fraser Valley dairy farm almost a year ago. "So there were about 54 inches of water here at its peak," he said. In another barn, Bosma introduces assembled media and politicians to Miracle, a black-and-white, hay-munching calf that earned its name by arriving in the world immediately after its mother was rescued from the rising water.
A new Senate report is calling on the federal government to work with the provincial and local governments in B.C. to create a better, more comprehensive flood relief plan to protect the Fraser Valley from disastrous flooding in the future. The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry released its findings on Thursday after hearing from nearly two dozen witnesses about the disastrous effects of flooding last November and the support the province offered in the aftermath.
With rain and snow forecast for British Columbia, it's finally time to bid goodbye to the province's long dry spell. Environment Canada is calling for just under 10 millimetres of rain in the Fraser Valley and about seven millimetres on parts of eastern Vancouver Island by early Saturday, but parched areas of the Sunshine Coast will have to wait a little longer for relief.
In a typical year, British Columbia would be well into its rainy season by mid-October. Instead, cities across the province have seen a fraction of the rain they normally would by this time of year, and unseasonably warm temperatures have set records in the province on 10 of 13 days so far this month. According to The Canadian Press, the City of Vancouver sees an average of 165 millimetres of rain between July and Oct. 14. This year, the city has received just 16 millimetres – less than 10 per cent of the average.
Abbotsford farmers hosted a free lunch on Saturday to thank community members for help and support during 2021's disastrous floods. Historic rainfall caused catastrophic floods in the Fraser Valley that damaged farms and forced thousands to flee their homes last November. The Farmers Thanking the Community event, jointly hosted by several farming industry groups, was held at the Abbotsford Exhibition Park. Guests ate a complimentary lunch featuring locally produced food, entertainment and the chance to talk to local farmers.
British Columbia's Ministry of Health is warning residents in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley of possible water contamination connected to the recent flooding in the province. Record-setting precipitation fell between Nov. 14 and Dec. 2 in southwestern B.C., causing severe flooding that destroyed homes and farms, and caused landslides that killed several people. Officials say heavy rain may have caused overflow or failure of liquid manure storage systems in the region. The province says it is working with farm operators to reduce the risks of possible overflow.
We start in British Columbia, where more heavy rainfall is expected this week and flooding shows no signs of abating. Floodwaters in the hard-hit community of Abbotsford are rising again as the Nooksack River south of the border overflows. Farmers in the region continue to assess the damage to their operations. As the Canadian Press reports, blueberry farmer David Gill says the devastating floods have set famers back by “at least a decade” and it will take them years to recover. Thousands of livestock were killed in the floods and fields across the Fraser Valley are still flooded with contaminated water. As CBC News reports, experts say it will be weeks before farmers know how the contaminated waters have affected the region’s fertile farmland.
The third in a series of increasingly intense storms is approaching British Columbia, leaving residents bracing for more torrential rain while officials are still addressing damage done across the Lower Mainland and southern Interior from the last two storms. Communities across the province were busy preparing for the latest storm during a brief reprieve from the weather in some areas Monday. Farmers rushed again to move dozens of cattle, including calves, to higher ground while residents packed sandbags around their homes.
Six days into the flood, Harman Kaur and her husband took a drive past their acreage and found thousands of their ruby-red blueberry bushes were still completely buried in the murky, brown floodwater. Leaking pesticides swirled around the field. Garbage and gas tanks floated past. The smell of fuel filled their noses. "There was a complete layer of oil on top [of the water], and we're talking what I could just see from the road," said Kaur, 29, whose family has owned their farm in the Arnold area of Abbotsford, B.C., for more than a decade.
Abbotsford Mayor Henry Braun says he's increasingly concerned about rising waters in and around his city as a series of atmospheric rivers continues to pummel B.C.'s South Coast. During a news conference on Sunday, Braun said Whatcom County in Washington state had advised that water has now risen above a dike on the Nooksack River, and it's pooling between the river and a nearby road.
For Avtar Dhillon, living in the Sumas Prairie in Abbotsford meant cultivating his dream to farm the world's most expensive spice in British Columbia. Now his crop of about 250,000 saffron bulbs lies still under several feet of muddied water. The farmer, who recently said he was B.C.'s first to farm saffron on a large commercial scale, says his farm has suffered catastrophic damage due to flooding in the Fraser Valley. "I'm very upset about [the] saffron ... I take six years to get to this point ... and then Monday just lost everything." For Dhillon, who is also a blueberry farmer, it took several years of experimenting with different methods of growing saffron before finding one that worked.
Photos show just how deep the floodwaters were last week following a storm across the southern half of British Columbia. Images captured by The Canadian Press show three areas of Abbotsford, B.C., as they looked underwater, at the height of the flooding in the Fraser Valley city. The same locations were then photographed again as the water receded, showing the dramatic impact of the previous storm.
Karl Meier has spent days battling to save his property and dairy cattle from flooding in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, but he says the biggest issue right now is with local law enforcement. "It was bad enough we had to fight the water, but now we've got to fight someone against what we're trying to do," said Meier. Meier owns U & D Meier Dairy in the Sumas Prairie region of Abbotsford, about 100 kilometres east of Vancouver. The area is under an evacuation order because of flooding in the nearby Sumas River. Police-enforced roadblocks have been set up around the area to prevent people from coming or going. Meier said this is making it difficult for people to bring in supplies to the farmers who have chosen to stay to protect their business and their animals.
British Columbia has begun the mammoth task of assessing damage to its transportation networks, infrastructure and thousands of properties along the southern part of the province in the wake of devastating floods. The province also expects the death toll to rise. Thousands of people remain out of their homes and thousands of farm animals and livestock were also imperilled as waters washed away homes and left farms under metres of water as the province declared a state of emergency on Wednesday.
Marilyn Penner, Allan Toop and Nora Weber have spent a combined 170 years living in the eastern Fraser Valley. Toop's and Penner's families have been farming the land for more than three generations, while Weber has lived on the same village corner for well over a decade. All three agreed Monday they've never seen flooding happen the way it did this week.
