The City of Kimberley has finally secured $400,000 after an almost eight-year effort to investigate the potential impact of wildfires on its drinking water supply. The initiative was prompted 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 understanding the dependence on the environment for drinking water. He noted that wildfires are altering the behavior of natural systems that provide this vital resource.
Kimberley draws its drinking water from the Mark Creek and Matthew Creek watersheds, with the potential for a severe wildfire to compromise both the quality and availability of water long after the fire is extinguished. The project’s objective is to identify these risks and develop strategies to mitigate them without creating new challenges for the water supply.
The recent Matthew Creek wildfire, which led to an evacuation alert for the entire city during the summer, underscored the ongoing risks facing Kimberley’s watersheds. While wildland fire ecologist Bob Gray indicated that the recent fire is not anticipated to significantly impact water movement in the watershed, concerns remain about the potential consequences of a more severe wildfire in one of Kimberley’s drinking-water sources.
Bourbonnais and his team at UBC Okanagan are collaborating with the city and Gray to model how fires could influence the Mark Creek watershed. The research will assess forest conditions, weather patterns, and projected climate changes up to 2060 to understand how a severe fire could affect water quality, streamflows, and reservoir water inflow timing.
The study will also help identify areas where forest management practices like thinning, harvesting, and controlled burning could reduce the risk of wildfires. However, Bourbonnais emphasized the need to balance these mitigation measures with their potential impact on hydrology to avoid adverse effects on erosion, sedimentation, and peak water flows.
The project, funded with $300,000 from the Columbia Basin Trust and $100,000 from the city, is expected to span two years. Its outcomes will not only inform future wildfire mitigation efforts in Kimberley but also offer valuable insights and planning tools for other communities facing similar challenges. Bourbonnais stressed the importance of proactive measures, highlighting that the risk of inaction outweighs the risks of taking preventative actions.