Climate change and the related water scarcity in many areas is making it more difficult to deal with the ongoing housing shortage, according to an official from the province’s Ministry of Water, Land & Resource Stewardship.
Speaking to the Cowichan Valley Regional District’s committee of the whole on July 24 regarding B.C.’s water-authorizations approval process, Cali Melnechenko said the growing scarcity of water in some regions, including the Koksilah watershed, has led to some uncertainty for planned housing developments.
Alison Nicholson is the CVRD’s director for Cowichan Station/Sahtlam/Glenora which contains a large portion of the Koksilah watershed where there is currently a blanket restriction on the issuance of new water licences due to the ongoing drought conditions.
She said it’s known that times are changing as far as water availability is concerned, and what is happening more frequently is that water licences are issued for phase one of a development project, but there are no guarantees from the province that a licence will be issued for further phases of the project.
“Is it that the province may tell a developer that they will be considered for phase-two of their project once the ministry has more ability to monitor [the availability of water on the region]?” Nicolson asked.
“That, to me, seems like it’s not a good way for development to occur and I think we really need to get on top of that.”
Melnechenko confirmed that for most water-use purposes, the ministry will only license what can be used at the time, and if expansion of the project is being considered in the future, a new water licence application would be required.
“For water supply, we typically would consider build-out anywhere from 10 to 25 years out so if the plans are understood for the full build out, that can certainly be applied for,” she said.
But Melnechenko pointed out there are areas where water is very scarce and there’s a lot of uncertainty over the long term, particularly with climate change, for full developments to be able to be supported by water in an area.
“That could be a case where it might be more appropriate to phase projects in, in the understanding that they may not then meet the intent of the development, but there also may be a need to explore various water-supply options for a larger development as well,” she said.
Melnechenko said for larger-scale water users, the ministry usually requires quite a bit of testing and evaluation of water availability before making a decision on a water licence application.
“But some areas, particularly the south end of the CVRD, are becoming very water scarce and it can be a challenge to make a decision that water will be available for larger developments there over the long term,” she said.
Ian Morrison, the director for Cowichan Lake South/Skutz Falls, said the district and province are clearly in a housing crisis, but one of the issues that is being raised by the development community is that not only is the time required to have a water licence issued getting longer, but the preparation of an application for a licence is becoming more difficult as well.
“Is there anything in the works that is going to alleviate this backlog [of applications] and give the development community some hope that they can make an application that they have a reasonable chance, if all the conditions are met, that there can be a relatively quick issues of a permit so that these developments can actually start and that people can actually start to build some homes to help alleviate the housing crisis?” he asked.
Melnechenko said dealing with the housing crisis is one of the government’s top priorities and all applications for water licences for housing developments are put to the top of the queue.
She said there is currently a fairly short wait time to have applications assigned to a water officer for review.
But Melnechenko pointed out that many of the developments are occurring in areas that are already highly developed and where water scarcity exists, so the ministry needs quite a bit of certainty that the water supply in these areas will continue to be available.
“We also do have a lot of challenges with having very poor quality information being provided along with applications coming from consultants to support the applications, so often there’s a lot of back and forth and internal review required to get the information that’s actually needed to make a decision on an application,” she said.
