B.C.’s drought woes could be helped by monitoring and raising cost of water for companies, critics say

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B.C. charges some of the lowest rates in the country to extract fresh water and doesn’t monitor how much is being taken, exacerbating drought conditions, say experts critical of the province’s approach.

Amid the worst drought in provincial history – more than 80 per cent of the province’s river basins are experiencing high to extreme levels of drought – academics and First Nations leaders say urgent reforms are needed to conserve fresh water on Canada’s West Coast.

Younes Alila, an expert on forest hydrology and watershed management at the University of British Columbia, says the province gauges the health of its fresh-water basins and aquifers through a network of monitoring stations, but it has no idea how much water is being drawn by commercial users such as industrial farmers, pulp mills and mines.

Apart from BC Hydro and oil and gas companies, licensees must apply for a certain amount of water but the government never verifies how much they are actually using, according to Dr. Alila and other experts.

“It’s a bitter reality,” said Dr. Alila. “Without the political will to take these hard decisions and change things around, including imposing water metering on – at the very least – the heavy users, I don’t know how we could possibly solve this.”

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Deborah Curran, a scholar on water rights who is also the executive director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, said she has studied hundreds of B.C.’s water-licensing deals and none of them have monitoring conditions.

“We’re operating in a 19th-century framework here in the 21st century,” Dr. Curran said.

Critics argue that British Columbia should greatly increase the rates charged to companies to use groundwater. The rates have not been hiked since the province created the royalty regime in 2016. There are many classes of usage with different rates, but the maximum charged per million litres – or nearly half the water it takes to fill an Olympic swimming pool – is $2.25, which is paid by sectors such as the bottled-water industry.

By contrast, Ontario charges bottled-water companies $500 for a million litres and Quebec is set to match that next year, with that province also raising its rates for other industries that do not store their water from $2.50 to $35 to extract the same quantity.

“Water pricing has a significant influence on how water gets viewed and used and how it is consumed,” said Zafar Adeel, acting director of Simon Fraser University’s School of Sustainable Energy Engineering. “Discussion on water pricing tends to be highly politicized and most politicians tend to avoid getting into any conversation around pricing because there is a natural negative response from various interests.”

Dr. Adeel said royalty rates should continue to take into account the razor-thin margins of small farmers, for instance, but could also be raised for those using it to irrigate more water-intensive crops or hydrate emission-heavy animals like cattle.

Earlier this year, the province announced the creation of a $100-million watershed security fund and is in the process of studying how to change the ways in which it manages and regulates the water and watersheds of B.C.

In response to the criticism, the provincial Ministry of Forests, which oversees the regulation and enforcement of these water licences, says it is actively monitoring watersheds, streams and aquifers across B.C. as it urges people and businesses to reduce their water usage. But, in a statement sent by spokesperson Nigel McInnis, the ministry declined to say how it knows whether the 46,921 licensees are using specific amounts they were approved to take during set periods.

Asked whether B.C. is studying raising its royalty rates to spur more conservation, the ministry said “B.C.’s current water fees are in line with other parts of Canada.” The province gave commercial water users until March of last year to apply for a new class of groundwater licences, with the 7,711 applicants who met that deadline still able to draw from their wells or dugouts as their applications are processed, the ministry said.

The thousands of users that opted out of the licensing regime despite years of outreach and warnings from the ministry are now getting warning letters as part of what the ministry says is its approach of “phased enforcement.” The statement also said unlicensed water use has resulted in provincial cease-and-desist orders being sent to users in the Koksilah, Tsolum, Fishtrap Creek and Goat River watersheds.

The ministry did not say whether any fines had yet been handed out.

The First Nations Leadership Council acknowledged that low rates lead to more groundwater being used in its recent call last week for the province to begin sharing royalty revenue with Indigenous governments.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and acting spokesperson for the council, said Indigenous people are being hit particularly hard by the twin crises of drought and wildfire because many waterways are becoming too dry or too hot for fish to return to spawn.

“We’ve got a long ways to go until late September or early October for this to begin to diminish,” Mr. Phillip said.

Raising royalty rates could help reduce the “reckless use” of water, he said, as well as sharing the oversight and revenue from this regime with local First Nations.