By ROY WOOD

Oliver will continue to chart its own course on drought management and will try to avoid making “politically correct” decisions that inconvenience residents for no good reason.

And in the event of a drought, the response will take a decidedly “agriculture first” approach.

Town council on Monday approved a draft drought management plan detailing the town’s future responses to drought in the valley. The plan will be finalized by consultant TRUE Engineering and forwarded to the Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) to form part of a valley-wide strategy on dealing with drought.

TRUE senior engineer Steve Underwood, in outlining the draft plan, said that for the most part, the town would make its own decisions on water restrictions when there is a drought.

The one exception, he said, is in the extreme circumstance when the province deems a drought so severe that it imposes its own restrictions. Underwood and town operations director Shawn Goodsell said there has not been such an order in the Okanagan in recent memory.

The two “local triggers” that would lead to a declaration of the various stages of drought are the levels in the local aquifers that supply domestic water and the level of Okanagan Lake.

Water Councillor Rick Machial lauded the report. “The key point is that we don’t want to (make restrictions decisions) just to be politically correct and to impose hardships on our population.”

Machial mentioned Osoyoos, which, he said, made the “political decision” in the dry summer of 2015 to elevate watering restrictions even though there was no indication of water shortages in town aquifers.

That summer was hot and dry, leading the provincial government to declare level-4 drought for much of the province.

But Oliver suffered no shortage of water in the local aquifers or in the Okanagan River, which provides irrigation for farmers, ranchers and grape growers. As a result, the town imposed no restrictions on domestic water or on agricultural users.

“Oliver and Summerland had no problem in 2015,” said Councillor Jack Bennest. “It was a drought on Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland and the province got scared.”

The plan outlines the four stages of drought and the town’s proposed responses to them:

•Stage 1 – Dry. Residential lawn and garden watering would be restricted to three days per week. Nothing but voluntary conservation for agricultural users.

•Stage 2 – Very dry. Residential watering and outdoor water use two days per week. Voluntary conservation for agriculture.

•Stage 3 – Extremely dry. Outdoor domestic use down to one day a week. Agricultural irrigation restrictions only as mandated by the province.

•Stage 4 – Emergency. Banning of all outdoor domestic water use. Agricultural restrictions as mandated by the province.

Underwood told council he was seeking its general approval of the “agriculture first approach” that the report embodies.

“People around here are pretty intelligent and they understand the difference between lawns and agriculture,” said Bennest.
Council voted to approve the report and have it finalized and passed on to OBWB. Once it’s accepted, the town will receive $10,000 from the board to cover two-thirds of the cost of the report