...continued from Part 1

According to Michelle Woodhouse, water program manager at the Ontario-based environmental charity Environmental Defence, one victory for water management advocates in Ontario is that local governments now have the discretion to review any permit applications for new or expanded proposals seeking to take more than 379,000 litres of water per day from nearby aquifers. This gives communities a form of veto power over projects that directly affect them, she said, and is a power many B.C. residents may be eager to have.

But this new system has also drawn criticism, particularly from Six Nations of the Grand River, for a lack of consent from Indigenous groups for water bottling on their territories. The production of plastic to bottle water is another concern, according to Woodhouse.

“In 2020, Wall Street started to trade water as a commodity just like gold,” said Woodhouse. As freshwater becomes scarce, she said, that water shouldn’t be commodified.

Further abroad, New Zealand’s approach to water management is very different, said Bryan Jenkins, president of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand. Decisions on water use are made on the basis of the potential for adverse environmental effects — but once that is determined, there are few other barriers for those looking to bottle, sell and export it.

“Water is owned by everyone, which effectively means it’s owned by no one,” Jenkins said. “It also means that once the water has been allocated … then the water is effectively free.”

One waterway in New Zealand, however, has seen extraordinary measures taken to ensure its sustainability. The Whanganui River, on the country’s North Island, was given the same legal status as a person — allowing substantial concerns for its sustainability to factor into how it is managed.

“So if you’re looking at using the river in any shape or form — withdrawing water, discharging into water — then you have to consider the rights of the river,” Jenkins said.

The Indigenous Māori people of New Zealand also view water as something that has “mauri,” or life force. In addition to losing a sacred resource to New Zealanders, Jenkins said, exporting water can be viewed culturally as “losing the life force of the country.”

This is a feeling that British Columbians, Fletcher and Curran, said they can relate to when they see water bottled and exported internationally — especially when there is a growing need for water in many local communities.

Although two years have passed since the Union of B.C. Municipalities voted in favour of a moratorium on water bottling, efforts to promote better water management within the province remain ongoing. Paydli is hopeful the province will take inspiration from Merville and other municipalities by acting on this moratorium.

“It’s really some low-lying fruit for the government,” she said.

“Water bottling really highlights how our watersheds are being mismanaged in B.C., and I think it’s something people can see very obviously that there’s things that need to change.”

The Narwhal’s When in Drought series is funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC, which administers the Healthy Watersheds Initiative, and the BC Freshwater Legacy Initiative, a project of the MakeWay Foundation. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, no foundation or outside organization has editorial input into our stories.

Updated Nov. 19, at 11:23 a.m. ET: this article was updated to correct a calculation error. The amount of water Hongyan Zhenghong International Investment Inc. is proposing to draw outside Clinton, B.C. is 864 cubic metres — or 864,000 litres. Therefore it’s as much water as 2,769 average British Columbians use, considering B.C. residents use an average of 312 litres per day, according to a 2016 study.

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