As Western Canada enters a third year of drought, it is becoming clear that the security of the region’s freshwater supply is in peril, and that the systems in place to manage water responsibly have not adapted to the current climate challenges.
For communities such as Merritt, in B.C.’s Nicola Valley, the stress lies in not knowing when the city’s fresh water might run out. In April, the city warned residents the water service to their homes could be suspended if individuals fail to follow restrictions. (The mayor later walked it back, saying water pressure would be reduced, but not cut off.)
Merritt relies on groundwater from natural aquifers, which is drawn up to wells – but those are not refilling as quickly as they used to. City managers know there is less water in the aquifers, but they don’t know how bad it is because of the prohibitive cost of surveying underground. “Honestly, nobody really knows what’s down there,” said Mayor Michael Goetz in an interview during a tour of the city’s water systems.
The ranches around Merritt employ large irrigation systems to make up for the dry summers.
“I’m looking out the window here, and I can actually see a farmer’s pivot going around,” said Mr. Goetz. Because the ranches are outside city limits, he can do nothing about it, even though they are sharing the same diminishing water supply.
Merritt's Mayor Mike Goetz says his city lacks a clear idea of how badly the local aquifers have been depleted.
Meanwhile, the drought shaping up this summer is pushing the “wet coast” of British Columbia, and Alberta, into uncharted territory.
Even after a rainy June, Agriculture Canada’s drought map identifies extreme drought in parts of both provinces. This has raised the risk of wildfires – by July, active wildfires were clustered in the deepest drought regions – but also, lack of precipitation and low snowpack reduces the amount of surface water in lakes and rivers, which is needed to refill reservoirs. Even more concerning, drought impacts the natural systems that replenish groundwater – and that is a threat to thousands of wells and aquifers across the west.
Canadians are seeing the effects already. Before summer arrived this year, Alberta had 25 water shortage advisories in place. At the same time, close to 20 per cent of B.C.’s landmass was deemed to be drought level 4 or 5 – where adverse impacts are likely or almost certain. Many parts of the province imposed water conservation measures in April to ensure critical supply for drinking water and other needs.
In response, scientists and public health officials are sounding the alarm that swift action is needed to prepare communities, ecologists have expressed concerned about the impact on aquatic life, and governments are looking for solutions – even including re-introducing beavers to restore watersheds.
The water conservation measures imposed on Merritt residents were a bid to avoid more extreme shortages in the height of summer, but Mr. Goetz says permanent changes are needed to reduce consumption – and he’s now become an advocate for water meters. It may be unpopular but he believes it is a question of sustainability: “No water, no sewer, no town.”
One of the regions experiencing extreme drought is in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, which is among the largest inland freshwater deltas in the world. Its waterways span the British Columbia-Alberta border in the north. In an emergency preparedness briefing in June, B.C. officials warned that the drought in the Peace has reached deep into the soil.
It is an alarming picture and, in May, the tinder-dry conditions forced 4,700 people in the community of Fort Nelson in the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality to evacuate owing to wildfire threat. In the heart of the delta, firefighters were battling a string of blazes in Alberta’s Wood Buffalo Nation Park in June.
But water in this delta has rarely been abundant, in historical terms, and the region may be simply returning to normal conditions.
In 2011, professors Brent Wolfe and Roland Hall co-authored a paper charting the history of drought in the Peace-Athabasca Delta. Using information preserved in lake and river sediments, the researchers were able to calculate water levels spanning 5,200 years in Alberta’s Lake Athabasca.
Their findings show that the settlements and industry that have developed in Western Canada in the past 250 years have enjoyed a rare period of generally abundant water. Water allocations in the delta have been rising rapidly in recent years, but shrinking glaciers and snowpack are reducing river flow out of the central Rockies, a pattern which is expected to continue for many decades.
“We must now prepare for water shortages of duration and magnitude not evident in hydrometric records or our collective awareness,” warned Dr. Wolfe, a professor from the Faculty of Science at Wilfred Laurier University.
Modern water allocation decisions are based on a relatively brief instrumental record that doesn’t account for the magnitude and rate of decline in freshwater supply that is coming, they concluded.
“The transition from water abundance to scarcity can occur within a human generation, allowing little time for society to adapt,” said Dr. Hall, a professor from the University of Waterloo’s Department of Biology.
Their predictions 13 years ago caused not a flicker. But now, trees are toppling over from zombie fires smoldering two metres below the surface in B.C.’s northeast. On Alberta’s side of the Rockies, the Peace River basin had 12 separate water shortage advisories in mid-June. Communities are starting to understand the pressing nature of their warnings.
Public health officials are now warning that we need to better prepare for a day when demand for fresh water outstrips supply.
B.C.’s provincial health officer Bonnie Henry, in a report released in early 2024, warned that the quality of drinking water is declining in part as a result of climate change. Since 2017, the province has seen unprecedented and deadly floods, fires, droughts and heat events, leaving billions of dollars worth of damage to critical infrastructure, including water supply systems, in their wake. The number of boil water notices, water quality advisories and “do not use” notices has increased.
“These events demonstrated the clear need for further provincial disaster preparedness, response, and recovery planning and co-ordination for drinking water,” Dr. Henry wrote.
Geologist Diana Allen, a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University, has been monitoring B.C.’s surface and groundwater in light of increasingly extreme weather patterns. Although the province’s data is limited, she’s concerned about what she is seeing.
British Columbia’s understanding of its supply of groundwater is based on a sampling of more than 200 wells. Of them, 136 have current data, and more than one-third of those were showing below-normal water levels in June.
“This is where water security really comes into play. Because if we are seeing depletion of our aquifers in B.C., then we are overusing that water,” Dr. Allen said in an interview. She likened aquifers to a bathtub without a plug: If water isn’t routinely trickling down to refill them, then they will eventually empty.
When that point might come is unclear, as the province doesn’t track how much water is being used. “There are so many unlicensed users out there that we have no idea how much water is being taken out.”
And while human demand for water is growing, there is less water in recent years to share. “Drought is rapidly becoming a serious threat to water security and aquatic ecosystems in British Columbia,” wrote Auston Chhor, a salmon habitat biologist for Raincoast Conservation Foundation, in a position paper released in April.
For the paper, Mr. Chhor focused on drought conditions for the Nicola River, the second river that flows through Merritt.
“As droughts become more prevalent, conflicts between human freshwater needs and the needs of aquatic ecosystems will also become more frequent. As a result, streams, rivers and lakes located in historically arid regions of the province, like the Okanagan and Thompson-Nicola, are becoming increasingly water stressed.”
In an interview, Mr. Chhor said the province can’t manage effectively because it isn’t tracking consumption. “It’s treated like an all-you-can-eat-buffet. And the solution to that is to introduce universal water metering across the board.”
In California’s Pajaro Valley, researchers were able to test whether putting a price on water would reduce demand – and the study showed that it did. The valley is home to a US$1-billion agriculture industry, almost all of it irrigated by groundwater. When Pajaro Valley increased rates in one of its water zones by 21 per cent, demand declined by 22 per cent.
Water restrictions and metering are a couple of tactics being employed, but a growing number of ecologists are looking to restore watersheds as a longer-term solution.
The landscape around Iron Mountain, just south of Merritt, is parched. Residential wells ran dry in December. But on the back of the mountain, Kane Valley is returning to a lush wetland owing to the influence of one of nature’s most remarkable architects – beavers – offering some hope for re-engineering more resilient watersheds.
Beavers were wiped out in this region decades ago, and the wetlands they once helped create and maintain as a result of their dam constructions are degrading. Howarth Creek drained excess rainfall and snowmelt before water could percolate into the ground. That meant groundwater that is critical for keeping fresh water flowing in surrounding communities wasn’t being replenished – an invisible problem that is only now becoming evident.
In 2021, biologist Tom Willms led his college students up the mountain to build a series of dams that mimic the work of beavers, providing a starter kit for these aqua-scaping rodents that they have now released into the watershed. The changes are already evident as the dams trap and slow water, allowing it to slowly replenish groundwater.
Such efforts underscore how climate change is forcing planners and ecologists to look for new tools.
Beavers were almost wiped out across North America and Europe for their valuable pelts, and have since been persecuted as nuisance rodents. Efforts to restore their populations have taken hold in parts of Europe and the United States, but Canada has been slow to embrace recolonization.
The BC Wildlife Federation plans, over the next three years, to build 100 artificial beaver dams across B.C. and measure their efficacy for addressing watershed threats and supporting fish and wildlife. In partnership with the local Nooaitch First Nation, they helped sponsor the work of Prof. Willms in the Nicola Valley to build the first 10 such dams in B.C.
But while humans can make a facsimile of a beaver dam, it takes a professional to maintain it.
Prof. Willms relocated a family of six beavers to the Kane Valley last summer. During a tour of the dams in May, he pointed out where the new residents have been at work. The rodents have been recorded at work only at night, but in the daytime their presence was evident in the chewed-off tops of pacific willow and red osier dogwood.
The beavers have been busy improving on the replica dams, and adding new ones. As a result, Howarth Creek has widened and its flow has slowed. It’s now home to rainbow trout, while the riverbanks host expanding sedge meadows and thickets of willows. The watershed’s hydrology is changing, allowing more water to seep into the ground and recharge Merritt’s aquifers.
Prof. Willms said there’s more research to be done, but this provides something to measure. “We wanted to create a working example so we can learn from this. It’s been an opportunity for people to think about all the research questions that can be asked.”
As for the beavers of Kane Valley, “hopefully they’ll like it here and stick around. But they have their own minds.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly located Fort Nelson, B.C., in the Peace River region. It is in the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality. This article has also been updated to clarify that the waterways of the Peace-Athabasca Delta span the British Columbia-Alberta border.