Water is (almost) free in BC, even during droughts.

When the public pays for water, whether it’s gushing from taps or into toilet bowls, the price covers infrastructure required to get that water wherever it’s going, not the water itself. A similar rule applies to companies that extract water to bottle and sell: they pay to use the water, they don’t purchase it. And they don’t pay very much.

The NDP criticized the scheme when the system was proposed seven years ago. It didn’t change the rules after it took office in 2017. But the water-for-free scheme might be changing soon.

As a severe drought has set in across British Columbia with rivers running at record-low levels, concerns around water conservation and reservoir levels have bubbled back up to the surface.

Earlier this month, provincial Emergency Preparedness Minister Bowinn Ma told the public that everyone will need to pitch in, from municipalities to individuals to companies

“We are experiencing a serious drought which may worsen into the fall and summer or even into the next year,” she said. “We are calling on everyone in BC, including residential and industrial water users, to reduce their water usage. Everyone needs to do their part.”

Even though local reservoirs might be at healthy levels at the moment, she continued, they may not recharge normally if drought conditions continue beyond the summer.

Commercial extraction companies have also been asked to reduce the amount of water they use as well, and stricter regulations will be enforced if required, Ma said in response to a question by The Current.

The way commercial water bottling companies use Canadian water has long garnered attention across the country. In BC, the spotlight often lands on the Kawkawa aquifer, which covers 6.3 square kilometres underneath the town of Hope. It’s an unconfined aquifer, which means part of it is open to the air (Kawkawa Lake) and is refilled directly with rain and snowmelt. Water runs and pools below the surface in channels carved through fractured crystalline rock.

BlueTriton Brands (formerly Nestlé) bottles water from the aquifer at a facility just east of Kawkawa Lake. A spokesperson for the company said it would comply with “science-based” restrictions, and that its extraction activity takes less than one percent of the aquifer’s available water. The spokesperson said the company also provides (and donates some) bottled water, which it says is an important resource for communities elsewhere facing shortages or evacuation orders from wildfires—another effect of a dry summer.

“We share Minister Ma’s concern about sustainable water supply for the public and will abide by science-based restrictions the government may require,” they said.

Restrictions on water bottling companies during a drought aim to save water in the short term. But longer-term changes to conserve water used commercially were suggested several years ago, and have not materialized.

Commercial water extraction in BC is governed by a water licensing system that took effect with the Water Sustainability Act in 2016. A company with a licence pays a commercial water “rental” rate of $2.25 for every one million litres it uses. The rate isn’t tied to inflation, and hasn’t increased since it was set in 2016 even as the amount the companies charge for water has risen.

For each one-litre bottle of Hope water BlueTriton sells, it pays approximately two ten-thousandth of a cent to BC taxpayers.

When the current rate was proposed in 2015 then-NDP environment critic Spencer Chandra-Herbert (now deputy speaker) said the rate was too low.

The Liberal government at the time determined what was an acceptable rate, Chandra-Hebert said. "They think that $2.25 is a good value for a million litres. It doesn't seem quite right to me.” Instead of renting the water or charging for access, he suggested that water should be valued more like the precious resource it is—and like the consumer good it becomes after it’s packaged.

"If you're going to turn around and make millions through the sale of it, we need to put a price on it so we can pile that money back into conserving water," Chandra-Hebert said.

Eight years after Chandra-Hebert’s comments, and six years after the NDP took power, the water rental rate remains unchanged.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests said that the province recognizes public concern about the future of freshwater, but did not answer whether the government was explicitly considering changing the way commercial water extraction works in BC.

The government is developing a new Watershed Security Strategy that will determine how different watersheds in the province are governed. It is expected to encourage new approaches to water conservation “at all scales and across all users,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship, which is handling the strategy, said.

It might impact the water rental rate, and it might propose changes to the way the licensing works.

“Legislative change in this regard and more broadly may also be one outcome of the final strategy,” the spokesperson said.

Public engagement on the strategy concluded last spring. Indigenous consultation will continue into the fall. The strategy is scheduled to be introduced next winter.