Drought state of emergency enters 5th month in central B.C. town

Karin Larsen · CBC News

· Posted: Jan 04, 2024 7:43 PM EST | Last Updated: January 5

The severe water shortage facing the Village of McBride in central B.C. has stretched into the new year, with no end in sight.

Mayor Gene Runtz told CBC’s Daybreak North that due to restrictions and conservation efforts there is “barely sufficient” drinking water for his community of over 600 people.

“Our big problem is that for the second year in a row, we’re looking at almost no precipitation falling. We get plenty of clouds that come over and lots of wind, but almost no precipitation. There is some snow in the mountains, but it’s nothing like what it should be,” said Runtz. 

On Jan. 2 the village, about a 210-kilometre drive southeast of Prince George, extended its drought state of emergency for a 15th consecutive week. It was first declared Sept. 19, 2023, after reaching Stage 5 drought conditions, the highest level on the province’s severity scale. The community is currently sitting at Stage 4.

According to Runtz, the water shortage has been worsened by too much water a few years ago. In 2020, when a record high snow pack registering 230 per cent of normal levels melted, it washed out the natural drainage network that feeds the Dominion Creek watershed, where the village’s reservoir is located. 

“We went from a stream that was a very stable water supply with very little clouding to one that now, because of the damage done in the lower reaches, has quite a bit of sedimentation loads in the spring.”

‘Snow drought’

McBride, like many parts of the province, has been unseasonably warm with very little snow in the past months, a condition some are calling a “snow drought.”

According to University of Northern British Columbia environmental sciences associate professor Joseph Shea, a snow drought can be the result of two things.

“It could be it’s dry and it’s not snowing,” Shea told Daybreak North. “But it could also be that it’s just too warm to snow, or the snow that does fall just melts away. So you don’t have the snowpack built up like you would normally have.”

Smaller than normal snow packs exacerbate drought because of lower melt water levels into the spring and summer. Snow droughts will have a knock-on effect on B.C.’s increasingly destructive wildfire seasons.

WATCH | McBride residents continue to ration due to drought: 

McBride Mayor Gene Runtz tells BC Today host Michelle Eliot that water rationing continues in the village because of a persistent drought.

But Shea said it’s too early to declare whether B.C. is in a snow drought.

“Winter snow accumulations will continue until April, sometimes May in the mountains and that’s a good five months out. Hopefully we get a good series of storms that will replenish those snowpacks and build them up,” he said.

Shea said historical data on provincial snowpack levels isn’t consistent, making it hard to do a systematic analysis about how this year compares previous years.

The B.C. River Forecast Centre does put out a Snow and Water Supply Bulletin with the first of the season set to be released on Jan. 9.

This past fall, McBride installed monitoring equipment that publishes a daily reading of the village’s water supply and consumption levels. Over the past 30 days the village has been under the daily usage target, and well below 2022 usage rates. 

WATCH | Low snowpack levels prompt concerns for drought in spring: 

The warm winter weather may be a welcome reprieve for some British Columbians, however Environment Canada says the current snowpack is raising concerns of drought for the spring. According to some experts, British Columbians should conserve more water. Zahra Premji has more.

However the fear is if the dry weather continues, conditions will worsen. 

“We’re probably OK for the winter, but we’re just not getting any amount of snowfall again this year,” he said.

“We’ll probably be at even lower flows than what we’ve had, so we’re looking at how we can change and get more flow into the [reservoir] stream.”