“My primary reason for writing you is to share with you this significant mental health and social phenomenon that has become absolutely real in our community, because it does not show up in our water licence applications or technical reports.” Silas White, mayor of Gibsons, the southernmost town on the Sunshine Coast, articulated the problem in an open letter to Premier David Eby published on May 31.Ĭrucial water-supply and storage projects are “mired in administrative and operational delays,” White wrote, adding that the impact went well beyond infrastructure. Part of that “situation” involves the bureaucratic obstacles to getting new water infrastructure in place. “We may have been a bit of a canary in the coal mine, but our situation is far from unique,” McMahon said. The Sunshine Coast is no longer exceptional. But this year, two thirds of B.C.’s water basins were at drought level 4 or 5 - the most extreme rating - by the end of July and water restrictions are coming into place in almost every corner of the province. That, combined with the Sunshine Coast’s relative isolation, has made the region’s water scarcity seem unique. Most years, drought has been confined to small pockets of B.C. Farmers have been prohibited from watering crops for periods ranging from two weeks in 2018 to three months in 2022. Since 2015, the Sunshine Coast has imposed Stage 4 water restrictions five times. “As a society, we have to get over the idea that we have a limitless water supply,” said Donna McMahon, director of the Sunshine Coast Regional District for Elphinstone, a district studded with small farms. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal Two canaries on the coast Critics say the government needs to act swifter to enforce restrictions before things get to those dire stages.
drought is affecting nearly every region in the province, with two thirds of water basins at drought level 4 or 5. Unfortunately, it seems afraid to use them. NDP do it? The provincial government has passed a number of policies that could help communities and ecosystems struggling to adapt to hotter, drier summers. They range from insect plagues and parched crops to dead salmon, mental health issues, infrastructure crises and an overstretched public service. Others are playing out in every corner of the province right now, in ways both surprising and predictable. In the long run its absence is even more lethal and far-reaching than fire, which is but one of drought’s many consequences. Tumbach’s own home has been repeatedly threatened by wildfire in recent years, so he knows as well as anyone that when flames are bearing down, nothing else matters.īut water is life. all the way to Alberta.Īnd they’re just one of many drought impacts being overshadowed by this summer’s wildfires - an understandable distraction. Nor is his an isolated case: grasshoppers are devouring crops from the Similkameen Valley in southwest B.C. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. He estimates the bugs will cost him more than $50,000 this year, a crippling blow for any small farmer. This year an unprecedented grasshopper infestation has laid waste to Tumbach’s vegetable harvest. One in particular: as the surrounding landscape desiccates, irrigated farms become oases that draw pests desperate for moisture. It’s the knock-on effects that are killing him, he explained.
But Tumbach told me the drought wasn’t hitting his crop so directly like most farms in the Okanagan, his irrigation water comes from a highland lake that isn’t in any immediate danger of running dry. I’d asked how his six-hectare Okanagan farm was faring amidst what’s shaping up to be the worst drought in B.C.’s history, expecting an answer that had something to do with water shortage. Near the end of July, I found myself discussing grasshoppers with an organic farmer named Thomas Tumbach.
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