With much of the snowpack gone, the level of Cowichan Lake has fallen to 64 per cent, prompting concern over how to best manage the Cowichan River during what is expected to be another dry summer.
Brian Houle, the Environmental Manager at Domtar’s Crofton pulp mill, says they have yet to see the water level in Cowichan Lake start to drop by one full centimeter per day, but he expects that will happen soon, once the snowpack is completely gone.
He warns 2025 will be a much more complicated year, because of what happened in 2023 in the Cowichan River.
Low water levels, hot dry weather, warmer water temperatures and algae growth combined to cause one-hundred thousand juvenile fish to die in a section of the river.
“We are holding the flow at seven CMS (Cubic Metres per Second) now,” according to Houle, “and we hope to hold it as long as we can to ensure healthy conditions for the fish.”
However, he says at this time there is not enough water to reach late October in this condition.
Houle says in the past they’ve been able to successfully reduce the flow into the river down to four-and-a-half cubic metres per second, but that may not be enough this summer.
He says work is currently underway to develop a plan for managing the river flows, and it may be necessary to use pumps later in the year to maintain the required flow of water from the lake into the river this autumn.
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