After an extensive eight-year quest for funding, the City of Kimberley has successfully obtained $400,000 to explore the potential impact of wildfires on its drinking water supply. This endeavor was sparked by the 2018 Meachen Creek fire, which highlighted concerns about the susceptibility of local water sources.
Mathieu Bourbonnais, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Okanagan and co-director of the Centre for Wildfire Coexistence, emphasized the importance of recognizing the reliance on the environment for drinking water, noting that wildfires are altering the behavior of these systems.
Kimberley draws its drinking water from the Mark Creek and Matthew Creek watersheds, and a severe wildfire could jeopardize both the quality and availability of the city’s drinking water long after the fire has been extinguished. The primary goal of the project is to identify these risks and devise strategies to mitigate them without introducing new challenges to the water supply.
The recent Matthew Creek wildfire, which prompted an evacuation alert for the entire city, reignited concerns about the vulnerabilities of Kimberley’s watersheds. Wildland fire ecologist Bob Gray indicated that the fire’s impact on water movement within the watershed is expected to be minimal, with severe burning occurring in limited higher slope areas.
The potential consequences of a more substantial wildfire on Kimberley’s drinking-water watersheds are worrisome. Bourbonnais explained that such wildfires could lead to vegetation and soil destruction, causing increased erosion and sedimentation in streams and impacting snow accumulation and melting patterns, ultimately altering water flow timing in reservoirs.
Looking ahead, Bourbonnais’s lab at UBC Okanagan, in collaboration with the city and Gray, is working on modeling how fires might behave in the Mark Creek watershed. The study will assess forest conditions, weather patterns, and climate change projections up to 2060, analyzing the effects of a severe fire on water quality, streamflows, and reservoir water inflow timing.
By focusing on future scenarios rather than current conditions, the research aims to address the uncertainties surrounding how a worst-case wildfire could affect a vast forested watershed’s hydrology. The findings will aid in identifying areas where forest management practices like thinning, harvesting, and prescribed burning could mitigate wildfire risks while maintaining water supply integrity.
The project, anticipated to span two years, is backed by the Columbia Basin Trust’s $300,000 contribution, with the city providing the remaining $100,000. The outcomes will inform future wildfire mitigation efforts and offer valuable planning tools for other communities to adapt, emphasizing the importance of proactive measures over inaction.