The theme for this year’s Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) annual report, quite fittingly, is ‘Waves of Change.’ It’s a reminder of not only the waves of the pandemic, but also the drastic ups and downs in our climate with wildfires and heat waves impacting the region’s environment.
“We had to do a lot of paddling in the beginning, but once we got up on that wave, we’ve been working as hard as ever,” said OBWB Executive Director Anna Warwick Sears. “The issues around water in the Okanagan don’t care if there’s a pandemic, flood or heat waves. We miss all the people and in-person events, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”
Despite the difficulty of running the OBWB during COVID-19, the board has still managed to secure grants from senior governments. Just within the last fiscal year, they received over $265,000 in grants.
“It was actually quite a bit less than the previous two fiscal years where we had somewhere between $1-2 million in grants. But the grants that we received, the main thing that determines how many grants we get is dependent on how many funding programs there are because we are very, very, very successful – probably 80 to 90 per cent of our applications are successful,” said Sears.
This year (April 1, 2020 – March 31, 2021) began with the launch of the OkanaganFloodStory.ca website with up-to-date flood maps and information for residents to reduce risk and prepare.
“We’ve done a lot more to enrich these flood maps. They’re available on our website, and people are starting to incorporate them. The Regional District of Central Okanagan began working on the third stage of their flood management plan, looking at mitigation options, so we were involved in that. And everything is just building around this very rich set of maps so that we can help communities plan and prepare for future floods,” said Sears.
The OBWB also hosted the B.C. AquaHacking Challenge, where they worked with university students, water leaders and business mentors to develop solutions to water issues, and successfully moved mid-stream from an in-person challenge to online.
The Our Relationship with Water in the Okanagan education guides was another project this year which is a new series of outdoor curriculum resources focusing on local water issues, in response to growing requests from teachers. These were completed and launched this year.
“We’ve sort of rebranded it as a source protection toolkit for British Columbia with Okanagan examples. And it’s really getting a lot of positive feedback from different people,” said Sears. This resource goes out to schools and teachers from K-12 as a curriculum guide to help build out their classes on water.
This includes a guide about people’s relationship with water, a guide on Okanagan watershed and climate information, as well as a guide about building outdoor learning spaces.
This was created through consultation with syilx elders, but also with many other water educators throughout the valley.
The board also launched a new hydrometric network program with the goal of adding hydrometric stations to collect water supply data and improve water management. Significant work was done to start building a source protection toolkit for water suppliers, helping them address water quality issues.
Furthermore, they continued annual programs like the water conservation and quality improvement grants, sewage facilities grants, milfoil control, and outreach campaigns like “Make Water Work” and “Don’t Move A Mussel.”
“Looking back and looking through the annual report, it amazes me all we’ve been able to accomplish,” said Sue McKortoff, OBWB Chair. “Since then and through this summer, we’ve all been dealing with drought, fire, flood and climate change. All these things help us realize the importance of the work we’re doing.”
Sears agreed and added that a lot of the work was made possible thanks to the support of many partners, also committed to improved water management and action on climate change.
“We’re grateful to all of our community partners for hanging in there with us,” Sears said.
