Looking out over Okanagan Lake from the top of Knox Mountain.

(ADAM PROSKIW / iNFOnews.ca)

With drought drying up streams and lowering water levels in lakes and reservoirs across BC, the Okanagan Basin Water Board's this week's annual meeting is very timely.

“We have long understood that the Okanagan has water challenges. And, with one of the highest rates of population growth in Canada, this of course is going to affect water availability, as well as water quality,” executive director Anna Warwick Sears says in a media release.

The water board is holding their annual meeting tomorrow, Sep. 8, at the Mary Irwin Theatre in Kelowna to present its report Tapping Into Water Solutions. The event is free to attend but people need to register here.

Warwick Sears says protecting the watershed is especially important right now because of major droughts around the province.

“A number of Okanagan streams are running very low, causing concern for salmon that are supposed to come back to spawn. And this year’s wildfires have also impacted water supply in some Okanagan communities,” Sears says. “Conservation will continue to be critical until mid-October.”

The event will have presentations about issues affecting the Okanagan watershed as well as updates about the board’s different projects and programs over the last year.

UBC Okanagan professor Mathieu Bourbonnais is giving a talk at the meeting called Fire, water, and the changing Okanagan landscape about new ways to study how wildfires are affecting local ecosystems.

“We have some really big challenges ahead of us with water-related issues and rapidly changing fires, and if we want things to change it will take partnerships and collaboration with First Nations, communities, conservation groups, industry, and all levels of government,” Bourbonnais says in the release.

The Okanagan Basin Water Board is a group of politicians and First Nations leaders whose objective is to provide science-based advice and action to preserve Okanagan’s watershed. In addition to presentations about conservation efforts the board will announce which community raised the most pledges to protect the water basin and crown them the Make Water Work Champion Community.

Learn more about what you can do to preserve water in the Okanagan water here.

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