SUMMERLAND – Water management is in the spotlight following unprecedented irrigation restrictions and aggressive wildfires across the southern Interior
Summerland grabbed international headlines as the Bald Range wildfire raced from the hamlet of Faulder to the edge of town within hours of ignition on August 7, destroying homes, farms and disrupting power and water treatment plants.
“We lost over $1 million dollars in infrastructure, including all of our cold storage facilities, our packing house, our office – all the amenities our workers who live on site use,” says Erin Carlson of Carcajou Fruit Co. and Savannah Ridge Cherries. “It’s all gone.”
The orchard’s 48 foreign workers had to be evacuated by helicopter, and the fire ultimately cost them their final week of harvest, typically one of the most lucrative of the year.
Yet what remains are the orchards – 12 properties scattered throughout Summerland, which made water available to growers early in the season to ensure trees could get a head start before Stage 3 restrictions took effect following a record low snowpack and spring freshet.
“There’s some damage in some orchards,” Carlson says. “But the orchards created a barrier and stopped the fire from racing into Summerland.”
By ensuring farmers had access to water early on, Summerland ensured the well-being of both crops and the community at large – underscoring the benefits of irrigation beyond its agricultural importance.
“Where things are irrigated and farmed, they were much more resilient and able to slow the fire down,” Carlson says.
This was also the case at Davison Orchards in Vernon, which told growers June 4 to reduce their water use by 70%. Davison Orchards typically irrigates 200 acres planted not just to fruit trees but also small fruits and vegetables.
But when the Bradley Creek fire raced onto Grandview Flats on August 2, it stopped at the property line where irrigation began.
“The reality is that any of these irrigated properties is what is keeping the fire from moving into residential areas,” says Davison Orchards owner Tom Davison. “We provide a green area that’s less likely to burn.”
But the value of irrigation for fire suppression isn’t recognized by Regional District of North Okanagan staff, who continue to shut down growers who max out their allocations from Greater Vernon Water, which supplies agricultural users.
This frustrates Davison, who says there seems to be enough water available for new subdivisions.
“We have 60 acres of farm that does not have an allocation, and we’re continually being told that there’s no more water, but across the road from us there’s a new 300-lot subdivision going in, and they have water,” he says. “That property never had water before, but now that it has homes it has water. So, there is water. It’s just that it’s not for agriculture.”
This has forced Davison and other growers to pick and choose which crops to water.
“We’re continually prioritizing, saying okay, we’ve picked half that crop, we’re going to disc that under now so we can shut the water off there and prioritize young apple trees,” he says.
Zelaney Farms in Coldstream went public at the end of July with the losses it’s facing as it prioritized which crops would get water as it sought to stretch its allocation. More recently, Blackwell Dairy near Kamloops has seen the creeks it depends on for water run dry, raising the prospect of more than $400,000 in additional feed costs for its herd, among other costs.
The full extent of the losses from water restrictions in Vernon won’t be known until the end of the season, but the province’s Production Insurance program had received 155 notices of loss from drought as of August 20. Of these, 50 were from tree fruit growers and 105 from forage producers, who have also been hit hard by dry conditions this year.
Emergency response
BC agriculture minister Lana Popham told Country Life in BC that irrigation and water storage are key pieces of infrastructure, but the province’s immediate priority is supporting growers facing losses.
The province announced $20 million for the Agricultural Water Infrastructure Program earlier this year, boosting program funding to $120 million since 2023, but Popham hedged on whether there would be additional supports.
“Whether we’re going to be able to come forward with another package for irrigation is yet to be seen,” she says. “Those are ones that we would love to be able to prioritize, but right now we’re sitting with this emergency in front of us.”
In the meantime, she says growers can take steps to help themselves, pointing to a “really telling example” amid the Vernon restrictions.
“We have some growers in that area who are on fully drip irrigation systems, and then we’ve got growers who are not,” she says. “The folks with the drip irrigation, they still have water left in their allocations because they’re on drip, whereas the folks using the water guns don’t. That’s a black-and-white example of how we have to move to these more efficient water systems. Given what’s happened this year, I don’t think it’s an argument. It just has to be done.”
Davison is one of the growers who have upped their game, but it still isn’t enough.
“We have a fairly sophisticated irrigation system, and we have everything broken into zones, and soil types and crops, and we use exclusively trickle irrigation except for our sweet corn. We’re pretty efficient,” he says. “Typically, we use about 65% to 70% of our allocation, so essentially what it meant is that we had to use half of what we normally would, and that just wasn’t enough water when we got into the heat of July.”
Half of this year’s crop was undersized, he says, and large peaches were smaller than usual.
He wants to see more concrete action, not just talk.
“We don’t have people who are thinking big; we have people who are saying, ‘No, we can’t do that,’” he says.
A case in point was RDNO’s rejection of a proposal by orchardists David Geen and John Bylands to tap a deep aquifer on an emergency basis to sustain their operations and turn it over to the district at the end of next year. RDNO staff sent it back to the drawing board.
“We have to think big if we’re going to create an atmosphere in the Okanagan that is a wonderful place to live, and raise your families and grow crops and be sustainable,” Davison says.
Carlson agrees.
Summerland orchardists were able to return to their properties promptly thanks to advocacy by the BC Fruit Growers Association, but ongoing government support will be essential to preparing them for the next disaster looming on the horizon. The province’s Tree Fruit Industry Stabilization Project addressed the industry’s business challenges, but the climate threat keeps intensifying.
While late-August thunderstorms offered relief to some areas, sustained rainfall will be needed to replenish streams and aquifers that are currently at historic lows. With a powerful El Niño forecast for this winter, precipitation is likely to be light, and forecasters expect next year to be the world’s hottest ever.
“It’s super dry out there, so we don’t know what’s going to happen next spring. It’s hard to stabilize chaos, and we know that climate change is causing absolute climate chaos,” Carlson says. “If the provincial government seriously wants to do anything, then they’d better start acting on climate change.”
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