After an exhaustive search for funding spanning nearly eight years, the City of Kimberley has successfully secured $400,000 to conduct a study on the potential impact of wildfires on its drinking water supply. This initiative was prompted by the 2018 Meachen Creek fire, which highlighted concerns regarding 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 clean drinking water. He noted that wildfires are altering the behavior of natural systems that provide such essential resources.
Kimberley draws its drinking water from the Mark Creek and Matthew Creek watersheds, making it vulnerable to quality and availability issues in the aftermath of severe wildfires. The newly funded project aims to pinpoint these risks and devise strategies to mitigate them without inadvertently creating additional challenges for the water supply.
The recent Matthew Creek wildfire in Kimberley, which triggered a citywide evacuation alert, underscored the immediate threats facing the region’s watersheds. Nonetheless, wildland fire ecologist Bob Gray reassured that the fire’s impact on water flow within the watersheds is expected to be limited, with more severe consequences anticipated in the event of a larger, more destructive fire.
Looking ahead, Bourbonnais’s research team at UBC Okanagan, in collaboration with the city and Gray, will simulate potential fire behavior in the Mark Creek watershed. Their investigation will analyze forest conditions, weather patterns, and climate change projections up to 2060, while also assessing the potential effects of a major fire on water quality and streamflows.
The study will play a crucial role in identifying areas where forest management practices like thinning, harvesting, and prescribed burning can be employed to reduce wildfire risks. However, Bourbonnais emphasized the necessity of striking a balance between fire mitigation efforts and safeguarding hydrological processes to prevent adverse impacts on water systems.
The research, funded by the Columbia Basin Trust and the city of Kimberley, is anticipated to span two years. Its outcomes are expected to inform future wildfire mitigation strategies and provide a blueprint that other communities can customize to address similar challenges. Bourbonnais emphasized the proactive nature of this endeavor, highlighting that the consequences of inaction far outweigh the risks of taking preemptive measures.
