Concern is rising fast on the Cowichan River, as water levels drop.

Days into June, snowpack levels in the area are sitting at just 35 per cent of normal for this time of year, and snowmelt is badly needed for the hot, dry months ahead.

“This year, it’s dropped so fast it’s unbelievable. Never in my entire life have I ever seen a season like that ever,” Joe Saysell told CHEK News on the river outside his home Tuesday.

The Cowichan River is already running low, and stewards of the river, including Saysell, are worried about what that will mean for fish stocks.

“Fry are left high and dry everywhere because of this,” he said.

The flow from the Cowichan Lake weir has now been reduced to just over seven cubic metres per second, as they try to maintain water for fish throughout the summer.

According to Lake Cowichan Mayor Tim McGonigle, despite heavy winter rains, the precipitation didn’t store in the form of snowpack, which would keep filling the lake through the hot, dry months.

“We’re at 35 per cent of normal. So, currently, the lake is at historic lows of 2023, when we were pumping for a number of days,” said McGonigle.

“So we’re hoping for some rain, a June-uary that we usually get, but we’re not anticipating that with the forecast. So it looks like a very significant dry year for the Cowichan River and the Cowichan watershed,” the mayor said.

“All of a sudden, it’s like someone pulled a plug out of the lake and the lake just dried up. It went down from 120 per cent capacity to 68. Boom, just like that. In less than two weeks. I’ve never seen that,” said Saysell.

Fisheries and Oceans has placed a monitoring device outside Saysell’s property to log daily water temperatures and possible contaminants, trying to prevent another fish die-off of 2023, before it happens.

“It’s figuring what’s in the river, to do with chemicals and everything like that,” said Saysell.

Saysell and other volunteer stewards of the Cowichan River are fanning out, trying to rescue stranded fry.

On their side, this time, though, are hard lessons learned by the drought of 2023, when the largest die-off ever of fish in the Cowichan River was recorded. Conditions that 2025’s low water levels and even lower snowpack are already set to rival.

Source: https://cheknews.ca/its-dropped-so-fast-record-low-snowpack-impacts-cowichan-river-1258771