BC's economic security runs through its watersheds.
The Fraser. The Skeena. The Peace. The Columbia. The Cowichan. These rivers are part of vast watersheds that collect, store, and move the water communities and economies depend on. They provide our drinking water, support the food we grow, power our homes, sustain wild salmon, and underpin industries worth billions of dollars
But no economic growth plan works if we don't know how much water we have, or how much our watersheds can sustainably provide.
Watersheds aren't scenery. They're infrastructure, just as real as a bridge or a power line. Wetlands filter drinking water. Aquifers irrigate crops. Forests, floodplains, and beaver dams slow water during storms and keep it flowing through drought. When these systems work, they quietly hold everything together: farms, fisheries, energy, communities. When they fail, the costs show up fast, in flooded homes, dry taps, lost crops, and collapsing salmon runs.
Right now, BC is fast-tracking mines, LNG projects, data centres, and pipelines without a clear answer to a basic question: do our watersheds actually have the water to support all of it, or will new demand mean less left over for food, drinking water, and salmon? This isn't an argument against growth. It's an argument for making sure the water is there to sustain it.
The solution comes down to three things: rebuild the natural infrastructure, wetlands, floodplains, and headwater forests, that buffers communities against flood and drought; scale up our water monitoring, so BC finally knows how much water exists and how it's being used; and give watersheds a stronger local voice through watershed boards that bring First Nations, local governments, farmers, and industry to the same table before conflict breaks out.
None of it happens without people doing the work on the ground, and funding it doesn't have to cost residents anything. BC's largest industrial water users still pay just $2.25 per million litres, among the lowest rates in the country. Reinvesting updated industrial water revenue into the Watershed Security Fund is a straightforward way to make sure the biggest users are part of the solution. Eighty-three percent of British Columbians already support this based on a recent poll.
With a provincial election underway, it's worth asking candidates directly: what will they do to secure the watersheds this province's whole economy depends on?
Read the full opinion piece: https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/opinion-bc-economic-security-runs-through-our-watersheds
