Sooke reservoir, March 5, 2014. Photo © Capital Regional District

We can relax. The Sooke Reservoir is filled to capacity—once again, and at last. The series of storms that recently charged across the region did the honours. Together, they dropped 83 per cent of the rainfall we typically see in all of a March in the month’s first nine days, and ended the region’s latest winter dry spell.

A full reservoir means we now face summer with only the usual limits on water use. Years of summertime water restrictions have trained many of us to turn blind eyes to brown lawns and dusty vehicles.

Managing water is key to ensuring enough remains to go around in coming years. Last year’s hot, dry weather provided a taste of what climate-change models predict for the coast in coming decades—longer, warmer, drier summers, and more more-intense storms, particularly in winter. Although we cannot control when, where or how much rain falls here, we can to some extent control what happens once it hits the ground.

Two measures in B.C. that relate to that concept come to mind….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Bottled water. Photo © Steven Depolo, creative commons