BRITISH COLUMBIA SNOWPACK LEVELS ARE IN THE RED ZONE: “Floods directly impact a few, droughts impact everyone. When there is no water, there is no water until it rains again. For the past decade, the situation has been touch and go almost every year,” stated Kim Stephens of the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia
Note to Reader:
Published by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia, Waterbucket eNews celebrates the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. Stories are structured in three parts: One-Minute Takeaway, Editor’s Perspective (reproduced below), and the Story Behind the Story.
The edition published on March 25, 2025 drew reader attention to the low snowpack levels in British Columbia. Because the province relies on snowpack to sustain water supply during the dry summer months, a low snowpack is a harbinger of a drought. The story is a flashback to 2015 when Western North America clearly crossed an invisible threshold into a different hydrometeorological regime.
The story behind the story zooms out to provide a global perspective with an American focus. An article by Sara Hughes and Michael Wilson republished with permission of The Conversation. The American experience in 2024 shows that severe droughts can occur anywhere south of the Canada-USA border.
Risks, uncertainties and vulnerabilities when the climate is changing
Climate change has aggravated an existing vulnerability related to seasonal supply of water in British Columbia. Over time, and as the population has grown, the safety factor has been shrinking. While it rains a lot, we do not have an abundance of supply when demand is greatest. This creates risks.
Only a generation ago, water supply managers in British Columbia could reasonably anticipate that three months of water storage would be sufficient to maintain supply during a dry summer. Today, however, a 6-month drought is a very real likelihood. That is a doubling!
Right when we need a reliable supply of water, we can expect deeper, more persistent drought punctuated by flooding. Events have proven Bob Sandford to be right with his assessment. of the changing climate. As of 2015, we clearly crossed an invisible threshold into a different hydrometeorological regime.
Extremes are more extreme
Over the past decade, it has been one drought after another, dramatized by the extremes that impacted BC communities in 2021 and again in 2023. The mountainous nature of BC’s geography means that BC communities are typically storage-constrained, and what storage they do have is measured in weeks to months. This accentuates risks, uncertainties and vulnerabilities.
EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE / CONTEXT FOR BUSY READER
“Ten years ago, United States Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont invited to me to provide inspirational remarks at his 2nd Annual Leahy Environmental Summit. That was 10 years ago this week. By the time I arrived in Vermont, the writing was on the wall for the drought that BC was about to experience. The BC response to a changing climate was the backdrop for my presentation,” states Kim Stephens, Waterbucket eNews Editor and Partnership Executive Director.
Building resiliency in a changing climate
“British Columbia is about a decade ahead of Vermont in terms of responding to a changing climate. The main reason that is that our first ‘teachable year’ in this century occurred in 2003 whereas 2011 was Vermont’s teachable year, due to the dramatic flood impacts of Hurricane Irene.”
“When I asked Senator Leahy’s team why they had reached out to me, they said it was our ‘convening for action’ experience that caught their attention. They liked what they had read about our top down and bottom approach to collaboration; and how we were aligning efforts at the provincial, regional and local scales in the Georgia Basin through a regional team approach.”
BC’s top news story of 2015 was the drought
“It was a close call in 2015. The Metro Vancouver region was saved by a 2-day rain event at the end of August. The drought started early — with May being the driest on record until 2018 — and by late July Metro Vancouver had moved to Stage 3 water restrictions.”
“Meanwhile, parts of Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast Regional District had declared Stage 4 restrictions. There were a lot of worried folks by late July. There was no end in sight to the drought and we were on the verge of an unprecedented 6-month period with almost no rain.”
“There is no Plan B once the reservoirs are empty. Southwest BC dodged a bullet. The drought was voted the top story of 2015. Click on the image below to watch the video of Dan Burritt of CBC Vancouver interviewing me.”
Learn more about how Southwest BC dodged a bullet in Summer 2015. Click on the image of the front page of the Province newspaper on December 18, 2015.
Cities and communities around the world are experiencing countdowns to Day Zero
Floods directly impact a few, droughts impact everyone. When there is no water, there is no water until it rains again For so long, British Columbians have taken water for granted. In engineering parlance, the situation has reached the point where the factor of safety is minimal.
The summer dry season has extended on both ends – starts earlier and ends later. Communities can no longer count on a predictable snowpack and reliable rain to maintain a healthy water balance in watersheds. For the past decade, the situation has been touch and go almost every year.
This ongoing vulnerability is putting water supply systems and ecosystems under extreme stress. What we do on the land or how we treat the land has direct implications and consequences for water use.
North American water picture
With the foregoing as the context, the story behind the story zooms out to provide a global perspective with an American focus. Their experience in 2024 shows that severe droughts can occur anywhere south of the Canada-USA border.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY: Drought can hit almost anywhere – an article by Sara Hughes and Michael Wilson republished with permission of The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article which includes links to an abundance of supporting resources.
The article is a bad news / good news story that ends with hope because major cities around the globe have succeeded in pulling back from the Day Zero abyss. Invariably, it is about holding on until the rains come!
Sara Hughes is a senior policy researcher at RAND and adjunct professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of Michigan. She is a scholar of policy agendas, policy analysis, and governance processes about water resources and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Michael T. Wilson is a policy researcher at RAND, professor of policy analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School. He is a strategic planner who works with governments to create frameworks and tools to facilitate participatory decision making under deep uncertainty.
How 5 cities in the USA, Brazil, Australia and South Africa nearly ran dry but got water use under control before Day Zero
Water scarcity is often viewed as an issue for the arid American West, but the U.S. Northeast’s experience in 2024 shows how severe droughts can occur in just about any part of the country.
Cities in the Northeast experienced record-breaking drought conditions in the second half of 2024 after a hot, dry summer in many areas. Wildfires broke out in several states that rarely see them.
By December, much of the region was experiencing moderate to severe drought. Residents in New York City and Boston were asked to reduce their water use, while Philadelphia faced risk to its water supply due to saltwater coming up the Delaware River.
Before the drought, many people in the region weren’t prepared for water shortages or even paying much attention to their water use.
As global temperatures rise, cities throughout the U.S. are more likely to experience hotter, drier conditions like this. Those conditions increase evaporation, drying out vegetation and soil and lowering groundwater tables.
The Northeast drought was easing in much of the region in early 2025, but communities across the U.S. should take note of what happened. They can learn from the experiences of cities that have had to confront major water supply crises – such as Cape Town, South Africa; São Paulo, Brazil; Melbourne, Australia; Las Vegas; and New Orleans – and start planning now to avoid the worst impacts of future droughts.
Lessons from cities that have seen the worst
Our new analysis of these five cities’ experiences provides lessons on how to avoid a water supply crisis or minimize the effects through proactive policies and planning.
Many cities have had to confront major water supply crises in recent years. Perhaps the most well-known example is Cape Town’s “Day Zero.”
After three years of persistent drought in the region, Cape Town officials in fall 2017 began a countdown to Day Zero – the point at which water supplies would likely run so low that water would be turned off in neighborhoods and residents would need to fetch a daily allocation of water at public distribution points. Initially it was forecast to occur in April 2018.
Water rates were raised, and some households installed flow restrictors, which would automatically limit the amount of water that could be used. Public awareness and conservation efforts cut water consumption in half, allowing the city to push back its estimate for when Day Zero would arrive. And when the rains finally came in summer 2018, Day Zero was canceled.
A second example is São Paulo, which similarly experienced a severe drought between 2013 and 2015. The city’s reservoirs were reduced to just 5% of their capacity, and the water utility reduced the pressure in the water system to limit water use by residents.
Water pricing adjustments were used to penalize high water users and reward water conservation, and a citywide campaign sought to increase awareness and encourage conservation. As in Cape Town, the crisis ended with heavy rains in 2016. Significant investments have since been made in upgrading the city’s water distribution infrastructure, preventing leaks and bringing water to the city from other river basins.
Planning ahead can reduce the harm
The experiences of Cape Town and São Paulo – and the other cities in our study – show how water supply crises can affect communities.
When major changes are made to reduce water consumption, they can affect people’s daily lives and pocketbooks. Rapidly designed conservation efforts can have harmful effects on poor and vulnerable communities that may have fewer alternatives in the event of restrictions or shutoffs or lack the ability to pay higher prices for water, forcing tough choices for households between water and other necessities.
Planning ahead allows for more thoughtful policy design.
For example, Las Vegas has been grappling with drought conditions for the past two decades. During that time, the region implemented water-conservation policies that focus on incentivizing and even requiring reduced water consumption.
Since 2023, the Las Vegas Valley Water District has implemented water rates that encourage conservation and can vary with the availability of water supplies during droughts.
In its first year alone, the policy saved 3 billion gallons of water and generated US$31 million in fees that can be used by programs to detect and repair leaks, among other conservation efforts.
A state law now requires businesses and homeowner associations in the Las Vegas Valley to remove their decorative grass by the end of 2026.
Since 2002, per capita water use in Las Vegas has dropped by an impressive 58%.
Solutions and strategies for the future
Most of the cities we studied incorporated a variety of approaches to building water security and drought-proofing their community – from publishing real-time dashboards showing water use and availability in Cape Town to investing in desalination in Melbourne.
But we found the most important changes came from community members committing to and supporting efforts to conserve water and invest in water security, such as reducing lawn watering.
There are also longer-term actions that can help drought-proof a community, such as fixing or replacing water- and energy-intensive fixtures and structures. This includes upgrading home appliances, such as showers, dishwashers and toilets, to be more water efficient and investing in native and drought-tolerant landscaping.
Prioritizing green infrastructure, such as retention ponds and bioswales, that help absorb rain when it does fall and investing in water recycling can also diversify water supplies.
Living Water Smart in British Columbia Series
To download a copy of the foregoing resource as a PDF document for your records and/or sharing, click on “Living Water Smart in British Columbia: BC snowpack levels are in the RED zone!”
