Duncan Water Restrictions 2026

Duncan is the urban core of the Cowichan Valley and is served by the City of Duncan in coordination with the Cowichan Valley Regional District (CVRD). Source water: Cowichan River, drawn from Cowichan Lake at the lake's outlet near the Town of Lake Cowichan. The Cowichan watershed is one of Vancouver Island's most ecologically and politically significant water systems. Stage 1 came into effect May 1, 2026 across the CVRD and its partner jurisdictions (Municipality of North Cowichan, City of Duncan, Town of Ladysmith, Town of Lake Cowichan, Cowichan Tribes, and Diamond Improvement District). The 2025-26 Cowichan Valley snowpack tracked at one of the lowest on record entering the 2026 season – early-summer Stage 2 escalation is realistic. Cowichan River chronic summer low-flow context: the river has experienced significantly reduced summer flows over the past decade, threatening salmon spawning runs and stressing both municipal supply and downstream Cowichan Tribes traditional fisheries. In summer 2023 the Catalyst Crofton paper mill had to use 20 pumps for more than a month in September and October to pump water over the Cowichan Lake weir to sustain river flows. The 2019 Cowichan Lake weir reconstruction project was designed specifically to address summer drought – the new weir allows the operators to hold more water in the lake through the wet winter and release it gradually through the dry summer. This has improved but not eliminated the chronic low-flow problem. Local context: Duncan is known as 'the City of Totems' for its public collection of First Nations totem poles – Cowichan Tribes is BC's largest First Nation by population and has significant traditional territory and water-rights interests across the Cowichan watershed. The City of Duncan itself is small (population ~5,000) but the greater Cowichan area (including North Cowichan, Lake Cowichan, and Cowichan Tribes lands) totals ~88,000 residents. Duncan, BC is sometimes confused with Duncan, Oklahoma (a city of similar name in southern Oklahoma); they are entirely different jurisdictions.