Thank you.
I'm coming to you from the Okanagan Basin Water Board. We are a local government agency, a partnership of Okanagan local governments, and we have had a mandate since 1970 to take leadership on valley-wide water issues. We're one of the fastest growing regions in Canada, and we're one of the most water-stressed regions in Canada. While it's really good to see the federal investments in housing, we're going to need good drinking water to supply those homes.
I want to talk to you about two really urgent issues that require timely investment by the Government of Canada right now to avert massive costs and suffering in the near future.
The first is the impacts of extreme weather on fresh water. We had catastrophic flooding in 2017 and 2018. Last year, in addition to destroying almost 300 homes, the big West Kelowna wildfire came very close to destroying our multi-million dollar Rose Valley water treatment plant. This summer, we're worried about the Duteau plateau, which is where all of our reservoirs are on the east side of the Okanagan Valley. These reservoirs provide water for 90,000-plus residents and represent hundreds of millions of dollars of agricultural production.
Today, right now, B.C. snowpacks are at historic lows, so we're going from a drought last year into a drought this year. Water utilities are, right now, meeting to plan how to avert conflicts between drinking water for residents, farmers' irrigation and fisheries needs.
I'm here to ask the Government of Canada to further invest in disaster mitigation and adaptation funding to expand efforts to prevent damage from the floods, the droughts and the wildfires, as well as to expand water storage, upgrade irrigation systems and fund drinking water infrastructure. The time for this investment is now. It takes a while for the funding to flow, and recovery is vastly more expensive than proactive mitigation.
The second thing I want to talk about is the invasive mussels that threaten our lakes. The Government of Canada is investing heavily in managing aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes, but right now, zero dollars are being invested to prevent the invasion of zebra and quagga mussels into western Canada. These invasive mussels are typically brought in by mussel-fouled boats. Most of these mussel-fouled boats are coming from eastern Canada, which means it's an interprovincial issue and merits federal involvement.
The Columbia, Kootenay, Okanagan and Fraser basins are all at risk from these mussels because of our water chemistry. There are projections that the invasive mussels will cause B.C. more than $139 million annually. The CBSA must also be involved because invasive mussels have just been detected in the Snake River, which is also part of the Columbia basin. Federal resources are urgently needed right now for the B.C. invasive mussel defence program.
In summary, local governments in B.C. are facing intense threats to fresh water from the extreme weather events and from these invasive aquatic species. The costs of prevention and proactive mitigation are small compared to the extreme costs of repairing or even managing the damage. These are national-scale challenges that can't simply be transferred to the provinces or local communities. We're risking losing our local ecosystems, our salmon runs, our quality of life and our cultural values, and we're risking severely impacting local communities.
We're asking the government to invest in local government flood, drought and wildfire mitigation. We're also asking that the federal government provide equivalent resources to western Canada as are given to eastern Canada so that we can prevent aquatic invasive species, particularly invasive mussels, from coming to our area. We also request that the federal government fully implement the recommendations of the report on aquatic invasive species by then commissioner Julie Gelfand. I believe this came out in 2019.
Thank you very much.