Opinion: B.C.’s massive water management challenges can benefit from small-scale solutions

The province’s watersheds face “potentially critical water shortages” in 2024, the B.C. Energy Regulator announced in a January bulletin. Weeks later, B.C. Premier David Eby told reporters he was “really worried about the summer that’s coming up,” with conditions raising concerns about “some of the most dramatic drought conditions that have been seen in our lifetime.”

These grim projections of B.C.’s arid future raise a commonly asked, and understandable, question: How could drought be a problem – let alone a perennial one – in a province that gets as much rain and snow as British Columbia? The backstory on how our wetland-focused charity became B.C.’s largest owner of water-storage infrastructure dates back more than 50 years, when Ducks Unlimited Canada began entering into partnerships with private landowners and with the B.C. provincial government. Often, these projects were collaborations between Ducks Unlimited Canada, which sought wetland habitat for waterfowl, and ranchers and farmers looking for reliable irrigation and water for livestock.

These structures are earthen dams, between one and three metres high. Often there is some so-called “hard infrastructure” as well, such as a steel weir or concrete drop-box. But these are comparatively modest projects that restore or enhance existing wetlands, allowing them to retain more water, longer.

Beaver dams, like the hundreds of earthen structures managed by Ducks Unlimited Canada around B.C., help to store water when rain falls, and slow down its release into the watershed. This means more water sinks through the land to recharge underground aquifers, instead of simply running off dry soil into rivers and lakes.

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