THE EMERGING CRISIS AROUND GROUNDWATER LEGISLATION IMPLEMENTATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “All water users in BC need to know that the government takes unauthorized water use seriously. Enforcing the law will send a powerful message to historic groundwater users that if they fail to get in the queue by March of next year, there will be consequences,” said Ben Parfitt, resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Pollution Alternatives (May 2021)
If historic, non-domestic water users don’t get their licence applications in by March 1 2022, they’ll not only lose their authority to use the water, but they could experience a gap of years before a decision is made on their applications. “It is entirely possible that after the deadline ranchers or farmers who had used water from their wells for a century but failed to meet the licence deadline could find themselves competing for the same resource alongside new bottled water companies. That’s a minefield the government does not want to step into,” stated Ben Parfitt.