Racing against drought, Canadian cities build for a drier future

By David Nesseth 

While flood and drought can be considered “two sides of the same coin”, as the International Institute for Sustainable Development puts it, at least one British Columbia city has seemingly had its coin glued drought-side up of late. Its leaders, though, along with a growing number of cities across Canada, are busy calculating ways to improve their odds. 

For years, Canada’s cities have been bracing for wetter springs and rising floodwaters. Now, after one of the driest summers on record across much of the country, they are also confronting the opposite threat: how to secure drinking water in an age of prolonged drought. 

In Dawson Creek, B.C., the challenge has become very real. After years of severe drought, the city is pushing ahead with plans for a new drinking water pipeline, most likely to the Peace River, some 55 kilometres away. Officials see it as the best long-term fix for a water system that can no longer count on historic flows from the Kiskatinaw River. 

“The urgency is real,” Dawson Creek CAO Kevin Henderson told ES&E Magazine. “We have been subject to a prolonged severe drought for the last four years. Our systems and mitigation efforts have sustained us until recently, where we see the impacts of this drought causing concerning outcomes in our watershed.” 

Now, the city wants the province’s help to fast-track the project’s environmental assessment (EA). “We do not have three to five years for a complete EA process as it sits today,” Henderson adds. 

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) confirmed it’s guiding the city through the exemption review process to avoid a full EA, but even that application process alone could take eighteen months. Once the applications are submitted, the EAO says a 90-day engagement process begins with governments, First Nations and the public. The city will then need to file a detailed project description, which the EAO will review before issuing a recommendation to the environment minister. If successful, it would cut a five-year approval process down to two. 

Beyond approvals, the city still faces a steep price tag. It will need funding from senior governments and partnerships with industry and First Nations to move the pipeline forward. Programs like the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund and the Natural Infrastructure Fund stand out as primary options, and have been used elsewhere in B.C. to combat drought. 

Henderson says he’s been working with a pipeline company in the region to provide some early conceptual numbers, which put the project in the $100-million range. It’s all work to address the fact that the northeast part of B.C. is experiencing a historic period of drought, with the Kiskatinaw River displaying its lowest flows in recorded history. 

Over the past 15 years, Dawson Creek has taken big steps to safeguard its water supply. In 2009, the city built a control weir at the river’s headwaters to help keep water flowing during dry spells. In 2024, officials even released water back into the river to sustain winter flows, which shows just how serious the drought has become. To ease the strain, the city opened a Water Reclamation Facility in 2012, providing treated water for industry so more of the fresh supply could go to homes and businesses. 

By 2018, Dawson Creek added another layer of protection: the South Dawson Reservoir. With the ability to store 1 million m3 of water, which is enough to last the city about 115 days, it now serves as a critical drought reserve. Together with other reservoirs they add up to nearly two extra months of supply. 

While these reservoirs provide a much-needed buffer, Henderson says if moisture doesn’t increase in the area before the winter freeze, they could end up relying on them solely. 

Canada Dry 

Dawson Creek’s situation highlights the fact that 71% of Canada was either abnormally dry or under drought conditions as of the end of July, according to the Canadian Drought Monitor, which looks at 120 different pieces of data, such as streamflow values. From June to August, several regions received less than half their usual seasonal rainfall. 

“Some heavy rain fell in August in several areas, but it wasn’t enough to make up for months of shortages,” Environment Canada announced in its final assessment of summer precipitation. 

Even Ontario experienced unusual levels of drought, thanks to a summer heat wave. It was the driest summer in the nation’s capital since 2012, and the eighth driest on record. But Ontario wasn’t alone for the dry spell. In fact, parts of the prairies saw drought extremes, too, and parts of Alberta, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Conditions were remarkably dry in Nova Scotia’s Digby County, where less than 100 millimetres of rain was recorded during the summer. For Saint John, New Brunswick, early indications suggest that it was in fact the driest summer on record dating back to 1870. 

During the heart of the summer in late July, 10 of the 40 monitoring stations used by provincial officials in Newfoundland also registered all-time lows. 

Even in September 2025, water flow levels continued to reach critical points, leading the B.C. government to force water restrictions through temporary protection orders on farmers and other users when chinook salmon spawning in the Salmon River and Bessette Creek watersheds are threatened. 

Positive momentum on the Sunshine Coast 

More than 1,000 km south from Dawson Creek, B.C.’s Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) has faced similar challenges with drought in recent years. In 2022 and 2023, the region was at a Level 5 drought rating, which is the province’s highest classification. This means ecosystem damage and economic disruption are “almost certain.” But a lifeline has been appearing through a series of resilience-enhancing projects, plus substantial funding of some $117 million early in 2025. 

The summer of 2025 saw some rain in the sunshine district, too, which has helped, Remko Rosenboom, SCRD’s General Manager of Infrastructure services, told Environmental Science & Engineering Magazine. “With the main water system on the Sunshine Coast being rain-dependent, the spells of rainy weather have filled our main water source at Chapman Lake,” he says. 

Rosenboom notes that the $9-million pumping station near Gibsons, B.C., known as the Church Road Well Field project, can add up to five million litres of water per day to the Chapman Water System during dry months. 

“This water supply has been online for the past two years and this summer has been the first where we have been able to use it to its full capacity,” says Rosenboom. 

Rosenboom explains that the district has completed its groundwater well exploration project, which has the potential to bolster the Chapman Water System. He hopes that the well could supply up to 74 litres per second for community use, 50% more than the capacity opened by the Church Road Well Field project. 

The region is also installing water meters to encourage conservation and improve leak detection for the District of Sechelt. This project is 95% complete and has seen just over 4,000 meters installed. Rosenboom explains that while volumetric billing will not begin for these metered properties for another year, staff are finding leaks as meter installations take place. 

“Working with property owners to repair these leaks and ones that have been identified in other areas on the Sunshine Coast has saved a considerable amount of water that would otherwise have been lost from community use,” says Rosenboom. 

Partnering with the shíshálh Nation, the SCRD aims to upgrade the region’s existing water treatment plant, and construct two large-scale reservoirs to store water from the Chapman Creek watershed, which supplies municipal water to most Sunshine Coast residents. 

Uh, Eau 

Over in Quebec, a dry summer dropped the St. Lawrence River’s water level to 4.1 metres, which is its lowest point in four years and 60 centimetres below the median. These low levels created the illusion of new beaches along the river, but also forced Montreal to spend more on treatment chemicals to keep drinking water safe. 

Water treatment becomes more intensive to fight the low-level water taste caused by algae and remove other contaminants that have less dilution than when water levels are at typical levels. But not only does drought degrade water quality, it promotes algal blooms. 

Quebec’s low water levels this summer also impacted the water quality of the Rivière-des-Prairies, which is treated at the Pierrefonds/Roxboro water filtration plant. “As a result, the water treatment process is under significant strain,” Montreal’s environment department warned in an August advisory. 

On this same front, a Chinese study released in September 2025 in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering found that emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products accumulated at higher levels during consistently dry periods. This subject has been a growing area of focus for Environment and Climate Change Canada’s wastewater monitoring program. 

Natural infrastructure 

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) reminds people that weather patterns continue to become more unpredictable. As communities face shorter winters, dwindling snowpack with quicker melt, and hotter, drier summers, populations continue to expand alongside new developments. 

Many cities are now integrating long-term climate change adaptation into municipal asset management. Floods and drought can even occur in the same season, but the role of natural infrastructure in flood protection is more commonly recognized than its usefulness for drought mitigation, explains the think tank. 

During a recent IISD webinar, Calgary-based biologist Lesley Peterson, Conservation Director with Trout Unlimited Canada, says that communities would do well to consider a perspective shift: one of water coming to rivers, not from rivers. 

“We think about a major dam, for example, on a main stem river,” Peterson explained. “That doesn’t really protect aquatic resources. That’s the last opportunity you have to manage water on the landscape.” 

Peterson’s work focuses on restoring complexity to degraded streams — where erosion has cut the channel deeper, lowering the water table and reducing habitat. She wants to create a “maze” of pools and side channels for fish and wildlife. “We let the natural system do the work,” she says. This return to complexity could also involve widening trenches and mimicking beaver dams, improving water storage in a number of different areas, Peterson notes. 

Peterson, whose work is focused in Alberta, has been watching the rollout of Calgary’s Drought Resilience Plan. The city, which considers drought to be its primary climate hazard, has been busy adding leak detection, while undertaking water main replacements, water metering, and adding low-flow toilets and faucets. From an infrastructure perspective, Calgary’s addition of 2.5 metre high steel gates at the Glenmore Dam in 2020 doubled the storage capacity of the reservoir. 

As is the case for most larger cities in Canada, Calgary has a four-stage response plan for implementing mandatory water restrictions in the event of a drought which presents significant water supply shortages. 

A wider look at Alberta in 2025 reveals recent funding for the Milk River Watershed Council Canada helped to optimize farmers’ irrigation plans in the face of drought, as well as complete a wetland prioritization framework. 

Manitoba 

One example of Peterson’s belief in the power of allowing nature to be less controlled is the Pelly’s Lake controlled retention project in Manitoba, a 121-hectare water retention wetland system. Local officials completed the work nearly a decade ago by increasing water supply and reducing drought risk by buffering flow, increasing groundwater recharge, and providing 1.48 million m³ surface water storage capacity for agriculture or municipal use. 

The La Salle Redboine Conservation District team said that the Pelly’s Lake Watershed Management Project meant backflooding the valley with a volume of water about equivalent to one-third of the Stephenfield Lake Reservoir downstream. It was an effort to return the area to a way that water would naturally flow over the landscape. 

“We’re trying to bring back some unnatural order to the system to help it do what it originally would have done back in the past,” LSRCD district manager Justin Reid told reporters when the project was completed. 

Whether through pipes, reservoirs, or wetlands, Canada’s response to drought will hinge on finding a balance between engineered infrastructure and the natural systems that sustain waters. As floods and droughts continue to flip the coin of climate extremes, Canada’s cities are learning that water security will define resilience in the decades ahead. 

David Nesseth is a contributing editor with ES&E Magazine.
Email: david@esemag.com 

This article appeared in the October 2025 edition of Environmental Science & Engineering Magazine.