City council won’t sound the alarm bells just yet when it comes to additional watering restrictions this summer.

At its regular meeting last Tuesday (July 12) council narrowly defeated a motion to decrease the number of watering days to twice per week by a 4-3 vote.

Councillors Mike Goetz, Linda Brown, Dave Baker and Mayor Neil Menard voted against the motion, while councillors Ginny Prowal, Diana Norgaard and Kurt Christopherson were in favour of it.

“I’m not going to support [the motion] because we have an understanding [about] how we work [water restrictions],” said Coun. Goetz. “I just don’t think at this time, with the amount of rain we’ve had, that we need to get this drastic this quickly,” he said.

The city typically takes the first step and stops watering the local cemetery and parks before restricting watering days down to twice per week.

The municipality’s current watering restrictions allow properties to be watered three times per week between May 1 and Sept. 30. Violators can expect a $50 fine per infraction.

Ginny Prowal is a councillor with the City of Merritt. (Photo courtesy of the City of Merritt).

Ginny Prowal is a councillor with the City of Merritt. (Photo courtesy of the City of Merritt).

Coun. Prowal brought the motion to council after a presentation from Patrick Farmer, a senior water authorizations specialist with the Ministry of Forests Lands and Natural Resources, at council’s regular meeting back on June 28.

Farmer asked the city to implement water restrictions that follow the drought levels the ministry designates.

The ministry has four drought level responses to drought conditions. The first level doesn’t have any restrictions, level two requests a minimum 10 per cent use reduction, level three is a voluntary 30 per cent reduction and level four is a mandatory full use-reduction.

Farmer said Merrittonians essentially live with the first two drought levels on a regular basis.

The Nicola Valley currently sits at drought level two.

Stage one of the watering restrictions proposed by Farmer would allow sprinklers to run three times per week. In stage two, watering is allowed twice per week and stage three permits watering just one day per week.

At stage four the watering of all lawn and parks would be prohibited along with the washing of buildings, cars (except at a car wash), windows, parking lots, driveways or sidewalks. No swimming pools, hot tubs or garden ponds would be allowed to be filled either, and irrigation watering may be further restricted by council. At stage five most water use would be prohibited and limited to usage for health and safety purposes.

The presentation was received to council as a delegation, but no changes to the current watering restrictions have been made yet. 

“At this point, council has not committed to implementing a water restriction structure as per Patrick Farmer’s suggestion,” City of Merritt corporate officer Melisa Miles told the Herald via email.

District manager for the Cascades Natural Resource District Chuck van Hemmen said that in 2015, Merritt didn’t receive any spring rain, which led to flow levels in the Coldwater River dropping quicker and earlier than normal.

“Right now we’re sitting around six [to] seven times that amount of volume in the river, but if we were to have a two to three week hot spell, we could potentially be right down to the low level we were at last year,” van Hemmen.

Unlike the Nicola River, which is fed from Nicola Lake, the Coldwater River is replenished by rain and the snowpack, which has already almost entirely disappeared, van Hemmen said.

This story was updated at 3:28 p.m. July 19 to include comment from City of Merritt corporate officer Melisa Miles.