Diversion of water from Shuswap River Watershed into Vernon’s watershed (Okanagan)

There are three parts to this page - data on amount of water divereted, letter to editor, history of Duteau Creek diversion.

26,231.5 acre feet is diverted from the Shuswap River Watershed into Vernon and then Okanagan Lake every year. It is permanently removed from the Fraser River system. Imagine the effect this has on the entire aquatic ecosystem of the Shuswap River, especially the fish.

Source	Water licence number	Priority date	Acre feet	For
1. Duteau Creek	C032119	Sept 1, 1906	14,831.5 + 91250000(gy)	Irrigation, Waterworks
2. Gold and Paradise Creeks, tributaries to Harris Creek	C017839	May 11, 1921	8,000	Irrigation, local authority
3. Duteau Creek	C034700	August 16, 1968	3,000	NORD Irrigation, local authority
4. Duteau Creek	C025665	December 23, 1951	400	Water works, Local authority
		Total	26,231.5

 Look up any water licence http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wsd/a-z_index.html#s

“This water removal from the Shuswap River watershed is enough to give every person in Vernon approximately 752,478 litres litres/165,516 gallons of water a year, although most of it actually goes to irrigation. That’s a lot of water.”

Most of this water goes to irrigation.

Greater Vernon Water Services serves approximately 43,000 people.

About 2% of the users are in the Shuswap River watershed.

LITRES

There are 1,235,500 litres in one acre foot.

The math is

1,235,500 times  26,231.5 =   32,356,555,250            divided by 43,000 =  752,478 litres

GALLONS

271,328 gal = 1 acre foot

271,328 x 26, 231.5 = 7117204768 divided by 43,000 (people) = 165,516 gallons per person per year in Vernon.

This removal of Shuswap River water is equivalent to each person in Vernon getting 165,516 gallons per year.

Letter – duteau creek diversion of water

Lake is a possible solution

Vernon Morning Star

Published: June 12, 2010 12:00 PM

Take water for Vernon from the lake not the creek says W. Lighfoot in the letter published Wednesday, May 19. I agree. The lake is a natural storage area and it would eliminate all those dams and reservoirs on the creeks. Also, the impact of withdrawing water on the aquatic ecosystems is far less on a large body of water such as a lake than on small creeks.

In addition, by changing the water withdrawals to the lake there is the added benefit for the Shuswap River . How you may ask? The Shuswap River isn’t near Vernon .

It goes out of Mabel Lake past Enderby and into the Shuswap Lake . This is because one of the creeks that Vernon gets water from is Duteau Creek. This creek naturally flows into the Shuswap drainage.

However, since the water licence of Sept. 1, 1906, number C32119, this water has been diverted from the Shuswap drainage into the Okanagan system via Vernon . This water would normally flow into Shuswap Lake and into the ocean at Vancouver via the Fraser River .

But now this water cannot flow back to the natural system.

It goes into Okanagan Lake and into the ocean in the United States .

This type of diversion of water into a different watershed was noted as a problem by the Okanagan Shuswap Land and Resource Management Plan. This plan for crown land, of which the city and regional district are aware, specifically recognizes this as being an unsustainable practice.

How much water is diverted from Duteau Creek? The water licence is for 15,000 acre feet a year. This is enough to give every person in Vernon 68,000 gallons a year. That’s a lot of water. Imagine the effect on the Shuswap River system of the loss of this water.

So when you water your lawns and pastures, it is at the expense of the Shuswap River . In the summer high water temperatures kill fish. More water in the Shuswap River system would mean cooler water and better for the fish.

Although a Federal Fisheries order of February 17, 1971 requires a minimum release of four to eight cubic feet per second, depending on the time of year, a report says that in a dry year there is “little or no flow to meet this requirement.”

Too bad if you are a fish in the Shuswap River .

This diversion scheme and water licence was done in a colonial period at a time when Europeans were new to this area. It reflects a world view that sees nature as something to be dominated and manipulated for human use.

This world view can be traced to the ideas of Frances Bacon, who, in 1620, promoted the idea of controlling nature and seeing it as a machine. He said we should take “command over things natural.”

It is this world view of manipulation of nature that is the cause of our current planetary environmental problems.

There is an opportunity to change our relationship with nature and begin to live sustainably within the limits of our ecosystem.

Restore the water flows to the Shuswap River from Duteau Creek and get the water from the lake. Changes need to be made that take into account the natural world we live in and that gives us life.

Making this change will be a powerful symbol of our understanding of the human role on this planet.

Vernon, tell your officials to take your water from the lake and restore Duteau Creek flows to the Shuswap. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Barbara Westerman

Duteau Diversion – Jim Cooperman article

When Duteau passed away, the land was purchased in 1905 by his son-in-law who sold it to one of the Coldstream Ranch partners. Shortly after, the ranch water manager had the entire watershed, including Aberdeen Lake surveyed. It was likely then, as the original water license is dated 1906, that the water rights were also transferred to the Coldstream Ranch, thus beginning the diversion of Shuswap water to the Okanagan. And in 1916, the B.C. geographic survey renamed the creek after Duteau.

As farming is water intensive and the Okanagan region is dry, more water was needed out of Duteau Creek. In 1920, the farming community worked together to form an irrigation district, pooling their funds and efforts to build irrigation canals and two reservoirs in the Aberdeen plateau, using existing lakes. A third reservoir was added more recently.

Between 1965 and 1972, with the help of government funding major improvements were made to the Vernon Irrigation District, including underground pipes, booster pumping stations, intake works and dam renewals.

Unlike the Okanagan region, Duteau Creek has salmon and in the fall of 1978 too much water was removed thus killing thousands of spawning coho and trout.  Consequently, DFO worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and the irrigation district to better regulate the minimum flow requirement established in 1971 to protect the coho salmon that spawn as far as 10 km up Duteau Creek from its confluence to Bessette Creek.

By 1986, the system included 232 km of pipeline, 60 pressure reducing stations, 28 booster pumping stations, six dams, three chlorination stations, reservoirs, intakes and screening works. In the late 1980s, growing concerns regarding the long-term quality and quantity of water supplies led to a series of engineering studies that showed the need for regional water management.  In the late 1990s, a Master Water Plan was commissioned which resulted in the creation of Greater Vernon Water in 2003, a single regional utility replacing the three local water utilities.

While our Shuswap water has been well appreciated by generations of farmers, there have been many problems with the quality of the water for residential use, including its turbidity and brown colour from the presence of natural iron, humus, peat material and plankton. Although chlorination is necessary, it also reacts with the organic matter to produce carcinogenic trihalomethanes. Given that water from the expanded Duteau Creek watershed now services approximately 20 percent of the greater Vernon residents, a major upgrade was necessary.  A $19-million water treatment plant and new, 5,000 sq. metre reservoir is now nearing completion.