{"id":832909,"date":"2026-07-29T04:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/832909\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T04:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:27:09","slug":"b-c-restricts-water-usage-on-salmon-river-watershed-amid-severe-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/832909\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. restricts water usage on Salmon River watershed amid ‘severe’ drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The British Columbia government has issued an order affecting more than 450 water licenses to protect fish in the Salmon River watershed, saying the Thompson-Okanagan region has been wracked with “severe” drought.<\/p>\n

A statement from the Water Ministry says the river has shown persistently low streamflow despite what it described as significant voluntary conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

It says flows over the past week have been well below the minimum threshold required to support the survival of fish populations.<\/p>\n

The ministry says the order will help protect endangered chinook salmon by temporarily restricting water use for forage crops and certain industrial purposes.<\/p>\n

WATCH | British Columbia drought and wildfire update:\"\"<\/p>\n

B.C. officials share update on wildfire, drought season<\/p>\n

Provincial politicians and staff from the River Forecast Centre and B.C. Wildfire Service will provide an outlook on wildfire and drought in the upcoming months.<\/p>\n

It says the temporary order takes effect on Tuesday and covers 456 surface-water and groundwater licenses. <\/p>\n

The ministry says they must stop using water for irrigation of forage crops, such as hay, alfalfa and forage corn, as well as lawns, fairways and certain industrial purposes. <\/p>\n

Water Minister Randene Neill said last week that drought had created record-low stream flows in some B.C. waterways, especially in the Okanagan. <\/p>\n

She asked Okanagan residents to help conserve water and said she had met with agricultural stakeholders from the region, where farmers in the Salmon River area were implementing a voluntary irrigation schedule in hopes flows would increase.<\/p>\n

The ministry says affected water users would be contacted directly about the protection order. <\/p>\n

It says programs are in place to offer support for drought-related crop failures, as well as income declines and increased costs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-832909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}