Vancouver Island is heating up and drying out. This spring, the Island was facing a Level 3 drought. Currently, the eastern part of the Island, including the Comox Valley, is in a Level 2 drought, according to BC's drought portal.
Drought levels are measured zero through five, with zero meaning normal or wetter than normal, level one meaning abnormally dry, and level two and up meaning severity and dryness are increasing, with 5 being the most extreme.
In 2025, Vancouver Island's snowpack for the same year was measured at 39 per cent of what it normally is. For Vancouver Islanders, these alarming conditions are resulting in many communities rethinking how to manage water use, and the Comox Valley is no exception.
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On May 1 of each year, the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) automatically shifts into Stage 1 water restrictions, and then to Stage 2 water restrictions on July 1.
These restrictions regulate water usage in the region to varying levels, mainly by restricting the hours and days that residents are allowed to use sprinklers for lawns or gardens. The more stringent Stage 3 and Stage 4 water restrictions may be implemented at specific times throughout the year.
But some residents think the regional district and the municipalities could be doing more to conserve and better manage water in the Comox Valley, and some legal experts still think B.C. has a long way to go if it wants to be better prepared for a changing climate.
For the Comox Valley, all of its water sources are in areas that were stewarded for thousands of years by ancestors of the K'ómoks First Nation -- descendants of the Sathloot, Sasitla, Ieeksen, Xa'xe tribes and Pentlatch people. Many areas within the CVRD, such as the Puntledge and Tsolum River get their namesakes from the Éy7á7juuthem, Kwak̓wala and Pəntl'áč languages.
Serving about 50,000 people, the Comox Valley Water System draws water from Comox Lake, which then flows through various different pumping stations and reservoirs.
According to its website, the regional district provides water to the City of Courtenay, Town of Comox and the Comox Valley Water Local Service Area. These entities then operate and maintain the bulk water they receive.
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The CVRD also operates four other water systems within the Comox Valley: the Black Creek-Oyster Bay Water System, Graham Lake Water System, Royston Water System and Union Bay Water System.
Currently, K'ómoks First Nation receives its water from the Comox Valley Regional District Water system as well as some allocated water from the Puntledge River to Puntledge Reserve #2.
For many municipalities, water and sewer facilities eat up a significant amount of the annual budget, and research from the non-profit BC Water & Waste Association shows that most municipal water rates do not cover the full cost of providing water and wastewater services.
According to the City of Courtenay's director of finance, Adam Langenmaier, the city purchased water from the regional district in 2024 at a rate of $1 per cubic meter, with $6.3 million budgeted for water purchases and approximately $6.29 million of that being spent on those purchases.
With the addition of sewage utilities, the total cost for water and sewage use totalled $19.51 million in 2024.
Deborah Curran, law professor and executive director of the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre, told The Discourse that the costs all lie in treating the water.
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"That is the number one kind of historical giant elephant in the room that hasn't been addressed because we are extracting water from Indigenous territories with no recognition for those nations in whose territory we extract the water."
Kris La Rose, senior manager of water and wastewater for Comox Valley Regional District, said the automatic shifts to Stage 1 and 2 water restrictions began in 2024 for the Comox Valley Water system, and was previously in place for the other local water systems.
Stage 1 restrictions allow lawn and garden sprinkling but only during certain hours and days. Stage 2 is similar, but with a reduction of the number of days allowed for watering.
He said the decision was in part due to historical averages, and in part due to feedback from the community about wanting to know what to expect for water restrictions.
"That's been a move that's evolved over time, to reflect the average conditions and make it predictable for people if they're going away on holiday," he said.
La Rose said the conditions to increase to Stage 3 or 4 are based on the availability of water in each of the service areas. Stage 3 restricts any type of lawn or boulevard watering, as well as adding water to pools, hot tubs or decorative fountains, or washing a vehicle or boat with water.
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Stage 4 restrictions would happen in a water emergency and restrict any use of water other than personal hygiene, drinking and food preparation.
Stage 4 is unlikely to happen often, according to La Rose, but still possible. "Looking into the future, at some point it's likely to happen."
It has happened before as well. In April 2019, the CVRD asked residents to restrict water use to run an emergency repair on a large water pipe.
For the Comox Lake-fed system, which is the biggest system, La Rose said those decisions are in part based on BC Hydro's decision on flows sent down the Puntledge River.
BC Hydro operates a power dam along the Puntledge River, which provides electricity to most of the Comox Valley.
He said under the regional district's water license, the CVRD agreed to go up to Stage 3 restrictions if BC Hydro drops river flows to under 11.6 cubic metres per second, and to Stage 4 if they ever go below 5.7 cubic metres per second.
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The reasons for this are mainly to reduce the impact to fish in the river.
"Given our new water intake is in the deep part of the lake and is not threatened by water levels in Comox Lake, we are unlikely to shift to Stage 3 unless BC Hydro changes their flows down the river," he said.
Other than the Comox Lake Water System, all other systems are based entirely off of the amount of water supply in the reservoirs.
Both Graham Lake, which is responsible for Denman Island's water, and Langley Lake, which is responsible for Union Bay's water, have dams. Those levels are monitored, and La Rose said the decision to shift to higher restrictions is made if those levels drop to a certain point.
Black Creek's water draws off the Oyster River and groundwater wells. The community of Royston feeds off of Cumberland's water system and follows its restrictions.
La Rose said there isn't a single group of elected officials that makes these decisions around water.
The CVRD's Water Committee is made up of directors from the entire region. The Black Creek Oyster Bay Committee is a collaboration between the CVRD and the Strathcona Regional District. In addition, the electoral area services committee governs those services falling entirely within the rural areas within the CVRD.
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John Dacombe, who lives in east Courtenay, doesn't think the city is doing enough to restrict excessive water use and is concerned about the lack of equity in how water use is measured.
Universal water metering is widely considered a key tool for conserving water as it can help reduce water consumption by 30 per cent.
As such, within the CVRD (outside Courtenay, Comox and Cumberland), residential and commercial buildings use water meters that measure the amount of water used.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean home and business owners in the Comox Valley are paying for the amount of water they actually use.
Like many municipalities across B.C., Courtenay charges flat rates for water provided to single-family homes, no matter how much they use.
"There's been a real lack of appetite politically in the city of Courtenay to require or implement meters," La Rose said.
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"That has changed, and I understand that the city is bringing forward a business case this year to make the case for a universal metering program."
B.C. trails behind other provinces in terms of water meter coverage, according to a 2016 municipal water survey conducted by the University of British Columbia's Water Planning Lab. About 36 per cent of single-family water connections were metered in 2016.
In May, the province announced a water meter pilot to cover installation costs for 19 smaller communities so they can "track and manage water use and mitigate the impact of drought, while giving people confidence that they are only paying for what they use," according to a news release.
Flat rates are calculated in part to cover the cost of service and the need for infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.
Rodney Armstrong, manager of utilities and operational services for the City of Courtenay, confirmed with The Discourse that multi-unit buildings, which are defined by three or more units, pay the metered rate and that single residential dwellings and other properties without meters all pay the same flat rate.
La Rose said that new homes in the City of Courtenay do not need to put a meter in, but are required to install the infrastructure needed to put a meter in in the future, and that "all multi-family and commercial dwellings are required to have a meter in place."
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Dacombe would like to see everyone pay for the water they consume. He said he pays a flat rate in his single-family home in the Valley View neighbourhood, and doesn't think that is fair, especially considering many single-family homes are in more affluent areas of the Comox Valley.
"I'm literally watching water run down my street in the middle of a drought," he said, referring to watching lawn watering and car washing as the water pours down the local storm drains.
He's not the only resident concerned about this. In response to an Aug. 28 post on Facebook made by The Discourse reporter Madeline Dunnett asking how residents feel about water restrictions, more than a dozen people responded with various concerns about how the regional district and its encompassing communities manage water.
"Make it equitable. Why do some houses have meters while many do not?" wrote Facebook user Lyle Pierce.
"Goodness ... let's start with metering and having each user pay for their consumption! Any conversation about restrictions is ridiculous in a community that does not pay for what they use," wrote Facebook user Camille Douglas.
For 2025, single-family homes paid $624 per year for water utilities. Multi-residential buildings inside the City of Courtenay pay a fee of $92.64 for the first 48 cubic meters per quarter, and then another $1.93 for every cubic meter once those units surpass 48 cubic meters per quarter, according to documents from the City of Courtenay.
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La Rose said he does not think the current combination of flat and measured rates is necessarily unfair because it depends on the specifics of the rates, but that he does think it would be "a lot easier to enforce water conservation and to incentivize people to minimize their water consumption if they were paying volumetrically."
In recent years, Comox Valley residents have been asked to restrict water use and some residents expressed concern about seeing sprinklers running during Stage 3 water restrictions.
Dacombe said he wants to see more enforcement of water use restrictions, adding that he doesn't think enough tickets are issued for those not following the orders.
According to the City of Courtenay's website, the city issued 287 watering infractions, including 37 repeat offences, in 2024. "Most infractions were related to residential lawn watering," the release states.
But the city clarified in a Facebook comment response to Dacombe that of those 37 repeat offences, no fines were attached.
"The city's efforts have typically been on seeking compliance through an education and outreach program, with any fines issued at the discretion of the bylaw team," the city stated.
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The city did state that it changed its approach to enforcement as of this year.
"While compliance through education and outreach will continue to be the priority, fines will be levied after residents have received one prior warning," the city stated in the same Facebook comment.
La Rose confirmed that the regional district has noticed issues with non-compliance from residents.
In the CVRD, La Rose said each municipality has its own enforcement for the way they ticket water, but added that the regional district has "given out hundreds of tickets that do get paid over the past several years."
"In more recent years, we've been a little bit more enforcement-based, giving out more tickets. I think everybody's stepping up their game in terms of enforcement. We'll be holding steady on that," he said.
For Dacombe, he wants to see more action, noting that he's seen many people ignore water use restrictions.
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"There's a complete absence of any substantial enforcement," Dacombe said.
Curran, the executive director of the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre, told The Discourse that B.C. has a long way to go when it comes to water conservation and management.
"We really haven't even started in B.C. to meaningfully implement water conservation policies and restrictions that result in freeing up of water," she said.
"We're in this era of climate change, so we're going to get more rain in the winter, and then we're going to get drier periods in the summer. And this is particularly true for the east coast of Vancouver Island, of which the Comox Valley is a part," she said.
Curran said a big part of this shift towards more water conservation is creating a culture that values water conservation.
"We have this sense of, oh, we live on the West Coast, there's tons of water," she said.
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But Comox Valley's water is fed in part by the snowpack -- a resource that is on the decline.
Curran clarified that although there is a lot of water in the winter months, the summers are continuing to dry up, and that people need to change the way they use water depending on the season.
She said a "really easy fix" would be banning lawn watering during summer months.
"Like, why do we need green lawns? You could simply free up that amount of water," she said.
Another suggestion Curran shared is implementing different rate structures for different volumes of water use.
"You could have a low cost rate structure for what a family of four would normally or five would normally use in a month, and then anything above that, you'd be charged a lot more per unit," she said.
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What this does, she explained, is maintain the affordability of water for a regular water user -- such as a family using water to brush their teeth, cook, shower and use the bathroom. For excessive water users, such as those who have a pool, those homes would pay much more.
Curran said the two-tier system alongside imposing maximum water limits would also ensure that wealthy individuals who can afford excess water don't go into too much excess.
"These are not new concepts," she added. "They're very well proven and borne out globally, water policy measures that local governments have entirely within their authority to implement."
Dacombe is also a fan of this system.
"It seems to be a pretty reasonable compromise," he said.
He also has tools he uses at home to reduce his own water usage -- a soaker hose, a low-flow toilet, and he collects rainwater.
Curran says those things are great, but she thinks the pressure should be on municipalities, because it can't only be up to the individual to choose how they control water.
"[Individuals collecting rainwater] is so small-scale, you need a lot of storage to collect rainwater to then water your lawn for the summer," she said.
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"The challenge is that we have these community-wide water systems, and so requiring an individual to have their own storage might not make a whole lot of sense, because we're thinking on a community-wide basis."
Dacombe said he is curious about whether some communities in the province have water management dialled down.
Curran said there are some promising projects currently involving partnerships with First Nations and local governments.
For example, the District of Peachland is working with the West Bank First Nation and the Penticton Indian Band to deal with water quality in the creek where they take drinking water.
In the Okanagan, the Okanagan Nation Alliance has convened a process where the chiefs in the region and all the mayors have come together to create a water responsibility plan for the Okanagan.
In 2023, Cowichan Tribes and B.C. signed a first-of-its-kind water sustainability plan to reimagine land and water management.
Curran added that these community initiatives have occurred as a result of communities wanting to see homegrown solutions to water scarcity and other water issues.
"I look forward to seeing how those approaches turn out, because there's a lot of creativity and innovation at the local level."
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