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By Victor Kaisar

Water Restrictions

Barriere to implement strict water restrictions as crews prepare to repair malfunctioning well

Sep 19, 2025 | 3:40 PM

BARRIERE, B.C. — The District of Barriere will be implementing nearly two weeks of enhanced watering restrictions starting Monday (Sept. 22) so crews can begin work to repair a water well that has been offline for the past few weeks.

In a notice to residents issued Friday (Sept. 19), the district said the Stage 3 water restrictions will take effect at 9:00 a.m. Monday, and that repairs are expected to be completed by the evening of Friday (Oct. 3).

“Water any gardens and lawns ahead of time but ensure no outside water use occurs as of [9:00 a.m. on Sept. 22], with the exception of watering vegetable gardens,” the notice said.

CAO Daniel Drexler told CFJC Today that the repairs are needed at one of the district’s two water wells located on Spruce Crescent. He said that the affected well needs to be scoped and inspected after it stopped functioning properly.

“We need to dismantle the well,” Drexler said, noting the hope is that the well will be operational within two-to-three weeks. “We cannot operate a second well that is in close proximity for the majority of that time, so we have to reduce our overall water consumption.”

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Drexler said the District of Barriere’s third water well — on Bradford Road — is still functional.

“We need to have water for our basic indoor uses as well as for fire flows as we’re not quite out of the woods yet with the dry weather that we’ve been having over the summer,” Drexler said. “Last week, we were still hitting 1,700-to-1,800 cubic metres of water use per day and we have to come down to well under 1,000 per day.”

“We’re hoping people can help us get the volume down to a level where we can run the reservoirs and still have the well there as a backup.”

Once the restrictions kick in, Drexler says residents of Barriere won’t be able to water lawns or flower gardens as well as any trees or shrubs. They will be able to water vegetable gardens using a handheld container or a hose with a shut-off nozzle on their allotted watering day.

“It’s important to council to make sure people can still maintain their vegetables at this stage because not everyone has winterized their gardens yet,” Drexler said.

Barriere residents won’t be able to fill or top up swimming pools and hot tubs unless they’re using re-circulated water. They also won’t be able to wash their vehicles, unless it is at a commercial car wash.

“The washing of sidewalks, driveways, parking lots or building exteriors will also be off limits,” Drexler said.

“Ideally, we would like to have people turn off all their outdoor sprinkling systems by 9:00 a.m. Monday morning,” Drexler added. “We wanted to notify people [Friday] so that they have three days to prepare.”

“There is supposedly some rain in the forecast this weekend so that is good and it looks like there are cooler temperatures next week so we thought this was the right time to do the work. It was also the first available opportunity for our contractor to be on site.”

Drexler also said the District of Barriere is also working to reduce its own water use.

“We worked with the school board and they’ve already done their winterization work. They blew out all their sprinkler systems,” he said. “At the district, we have turned off all the water supply at all the parks where possible. We only kept the community garden alive because people are growing vegetables there.”

“We want to make sure that is still maintained for now. We’ll analyze it on Monday or Tuesday when we know a little bit more about what our water consumption level is like.”

People with questions about this notice or those looking to report “irregular” water use are being asked to contact the District of Barriere by phone at 250-672-9751 or by email.