Drought conditions gripping parts of B.C. create wide range of negative impacts

Drought conditions have become the norm in many parts of British Columbia in recent summers – bringing negative impacts to agriculture and migrating salmon trying to travel upstream to spawn.

Brian Thomas works the same cattle ranch that has been in his family for generations.

“My grandfather moved here in 1890,” he said about the Okanagan Falls property where he tends to 200 head of cattle.

To irrigate the fields where the cows graze, the ranch has a small dam and reservoir to store water.

“My grandfather built the dam in 1940,” Thomas said. “He already had the hindsight, or foresight, whatever you want to call it, to know that water was going to be an issue.”

Even with the dam, in dry years like this one, Thomas leaves some of his fields to dry out, because he worries the reservoir may not have enough water to irrigate them all for the full season.

He says ranchers like him are willing to build more dams on small waterways but would like the province to cover some of the liability.

Under existing regulations, any potential damage falls on the water licence holder – in this case Thomas.

“If we could get the government or somebody else to step up and take a little bit more responsibility of those dams, and the risks of floods and stuff, it would be a big help,” he told CTV News in a video call from his ranch.

The province did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the possibility of amending the regulations.

Increasingly dry summers also put another food source at risk.

Salmon returning to streams where they hatched may not survive the trip through extremely shallow or even dried up waterways – potentially dying before they have a chance to spawn.

“We have species like coho, cutthroat trout that are migrating back from the ocean and they go to the smallest of streams. They will find that there’s very little water there,” UBC forestry professor John Richardson said about the current conditions in some B.C. waterways.

The latest provincial drought map shows some parts of the southern interior, including the Similkameen and Slocan-Lower Columbia valleys, at level four, one point below the top of the scale.