You know climate change isn't stopping because politicians don't want to talk about it.
Chief Robert Louie has spent anxious months watching as his people's territory in BC's Okanagan region has withered under weeks of unusually warm and sunny weather. Creeks that should have swollen with snowmelt this year carried little more than wisps of water, and last winter's paltry snowpack melted fast, leaving the forests dry and primed to burn.
"I'm worried," said Louie, Chief of the Westbank First Nation near Kelowna, BC. Like much of southern BC, the territory of the Sylix Okanagan, of which Westbank is one of seven First Nations, has seen record-low snowpacks this year. Their territory stretches throughout the Okanagan region into the Silkameen and Nicola valleys.
"I'm worried for the people when you have low snowpacks, you have dryness, and you don't have water coming out of the creeks and rivers. We're already fearful of the salmon [because] we had some very low returns last year and this year we're expecting even more serious conditions … that's very, very sad," he said.
In its most recent drought assessment bulletin, published on June 4, the BC government warned that many reservoirs in the region won't fill to their normal levels this year because of the unusually low snowpack. The Okanagan is already at BC's highest drought level, forcing farmers to restrict their irrigation water usage while municipalities will likely struggle to maintain water supplies.
The region is home to some of Canada’s largest stone fruit and wine industries, both of which have struggled in recent years due to cold snaps and other extreme weather events that devastated harvests.
Vancouver Island and the province's south coast, including Metro Vancouver, are also dealing with unseasonably low snowpacks, forcing restrictions on water use weeks earlier than normal.
The situation is so dire that in May the Sylix Okanagan Nation, which includes Westbank First Nation, declared a watershed emergency across its entire territory — a move intended in part to highlight the flaws in BC's water management regime.
There were 57 new water licence applications in the watersheds covered by the Sylix Okanagan emergency declaration, a spokesperson for BC's ministry of water, land and resource stewardship confirmed to Canada's National Observer last week. They did not specify if the licenses would be granted.
The nation asked the provincial government to implement a moratorium on new surface and groundwater licences in the region, mandate water use reductions and better include local governments and First Nations in BC's water usage planning.
"We're calling upon the government and citizens of the area to be aware of [the drought] and very, very cautious," said Louie. Issuing new water licences in streams that are already running dry is particularly concerning because of the impact on salmon, he said.
Part of the problem facing the region is also that water management largely occurs in "silos," said Tricia Brett, a councillor in Lake Country, BC, who also spent most of her pre-political career working on water management in BC.
For decades, the province, local governments and First Nations rarely worked together to manage the Okanagan's watersheds and water supplies. That shifted about two years ago when local governments and First Nations in the region started collaborating on how to best protect the region's watersheds, she said. Louie added the approach is "quite unique" in Canada.
No BC communities aside from Vancouver and Victoria have protected watersheds, meaning they need to protect their water supplies from the impact of industrial activities such as logging. But while the collaboration has been a success locally, the province still largely controls key decisions around water licences while leaving local governments to manage shortages when streams are over-drawn.
The spokesperson for BC's ministry of land and water said in an email that the province is "working closely with First Nations, local governments, industry and the agricultural sector" to manage the current drought and address future water scarcity. The ministry's decision to issue new water licenses follows "established legal processes," they wrote, including evaluating if there is enough water to sustain new water licences.
Still, municipalities and environmental groups have long flagged issues with BC's water licensing process. BC has one of the lowest industrial water rates in Canada, charging companies a maximum of $2.25 per million litres. That's well below the rates provinces like Quebec ($36.05/million litres) and Saskatchewan ($17.44/million litres) charge to use their water, according to a recent study by the BC Watershed Coalition.
BC's top 10 industrial water users (among them seven mining companies including Teck Resources and Rio Tinto; two gas companies and a natural gas power plant) use more than 512 billion litres of water per year combined and collectively pay the province about $862,000 per year for that right.
That's equivalent to paying less than the cost of a small Vancouver condo for enough fresh water to fill BC Place almost 200 times over.
Brett said she hopes the provincial government changes its approach on issuing water licences: "We're dealing with drought [including] having to shut off agricultural water users," she said. "We're the face of [drought management measures] but we don't have the decision making authority."
