Anger spills out as one Metro Vancouver city refuses to follow water restrictions
Anger has sparked after the Metro Vancouver Regional District tightened its water restrictions earlier this month and one city decided not to follow suit.
On June 8, the region officially moved into Stage 3 water restrictions, which prohibit residents from washing vehicles and boats, except for key safety features, like windows, lights, mirrors, licence plates, and boat engines. They also can’t top up or fill personal pools or hot tubs.
It builds on top of Stage 2, which prohibits lawn watering entirely, filling or topping up aesthetic water features like fountains, and washing surfaces like driveways and sidewalks. Metro Vancouver implemented Stage 2 on May 1.
But the City of Surrey decided only to implement Stage 2, and not Stage 3, like the rest of the region.
“For the first time that we can recall, there has been an inconsistency when it comes to activating water restrictions,” said Jerry Dobrovolny, Metro Vancouver’s commissioner and chief administrative officer, at the Greater Vancouver Water District Board special council meeting on June 19.
“I want to remind you all, our drinking water system is one system,” he said.
At the meeting, the City of Surrey took some heat for its decision, given that Metro Vancouver is warning of a limited water supply this year and the potential for several cities to have insufficient water pressure if water use gets too high.
“I’m very uncomfortable with this conversation,” said Meghan Lahti, mayor of Port Moody, adding that she wanted to find a way they can compel Surrey to follow the rules.
“I don’t think that that’s out of bullying, I think it’s, ‘We’re all part of this … We’re in this together,'” she said.
“Are we going to wait until we get to an emergency before we compel?”
Jen McCutcheon, the director of Electoral Area A (representing people living in the UBC area), said that the situation “seems unfair.”
“To be honest, I find this conversation quite upsetting. Our region relies on us working collaboratively and cooperating as a region, and if we’re not going to do that, I don’t know,” she said.
But Linda Buchanan, the mayor of North Vancouver, pointed out that Metro Vancouver does not have the authority to tell Surrey what to do. The District does not have a mechanism to force members to follow restrictions unless an emergency is declared.
“Pitting ourselves against one another is actually not helpful, in my opinion,” she said. “What is our plan? What are we going to do collectively to actually get the message out, be prepared, and then have a conversation? I’m a little shocked that Metro Van has not picked up the phone and had a conversation with Surrey and is relying on the media for their information,” she said.
After a two-hour discussion, the board passed a motion to ask Surrey’s Mayor and Council to work with staff to align with Metro Vancouver’s ongoing water restrictions and response.
Why are we in Stage 3 water restrictions?
Elena_Alex_Ferns/Shutterstock
Marilyn Towill, the general manager of water supply at Metro Vancouver, said that summer 2026 is “quite different.”
Not only is the region’s snow pack extremely low, and it’s forecasted to be a hot summer, but the District is currently building a new water supply tunnel through Stanley Park to replace a water main from the 1930s.
To do so, it has had to close down one of the region’s main water supply pipes from the North Shore reservoirs.
While they started construction on the pipe last fall with the intention to finish it over the winter — and before the peak summer season — it has taken longer than expected.
Murray Gant, director of major projects for Metro Vancouver, said that as they got into the work, they realized they had more concrete to demolish than they had first realized.
Right now, they hope to turn the First Narrows Crossing back on mid to end July.
For these three reasons, Towill said that it’s important to keep water consumption below 1.4 billion litres a day. If the region exceeds this, it could impact water pressure and the ability to use water in emergency situations.
Water use in 2026 compared to 2025. Metro Vancouver Regional District
In a typical summer, Metro Vancouver’s water usage usually jumps to 1.5 billion litres a day.
How does our water system work, and what’s different this year?
Metro Vancouver has three water sources, Capilano, Seymour, and Coquitlam, and two treatment plants, the Seymour Capilano Filtration Plant and the Coquitlam Water Treatment Plant.
This treated water then travels through main corridors to connect to the region: the First Narrows Crossing (the one that is out of commission), the Second Narrows Crossing (by the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge), and then the Coquitlam Corridor.
Then, pipes move the water east to west or west to east, as well as five water crossings of the Fraser River to take the water to the Southern part of the region, where they can also move water east to west and west to east.
“To be perfectly clear, all these pipes are connected to each other,” said Towill. “Don’t assume that your drinking water is always coming from the source that’s closest to you.”
They use pumps located across the region to move water in different directions.
During a normal summer, water typically flows north to south, water crosses the first and second narrows by gravity, and Coquitlam usually supplies the eastern part of the region.
However, with the First Narrows Crossing not in service, there are currently only two water crossings: Second Narrows and Coquitlam.
Because Second Narrows has limited capacity, the region is heavily relying on the Coquitlam source, which has three competing priorities: supplying water to the southern part of the region, supporting water in the western part of the region, and maintaining system pressures for the Tri-Cities area.
Towill said that as they near 1.4 billion litres of daily water use, “careful balancing will be required.”
If they can’t maintain a balance between the three competing sources, then they risk seeing insufficient pressure in Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, and Coquitlam, which all rely on a minimum pressure to supply drinking water to their communities.
Further, they risk not refilling a key reservoir south of the Fraser overnight, which could impact the Township of Langley, the City of Langley, and the City of Surrey.
There could also potentially be insufficient pressure in Vancouver, Richmond, and the University Endowment Lands.
What does Surrey have to say?
Ola List/Shutterstock
In May, the City of Surrey changed its drinking water conservation plan by-law to enhance “discretion for the City Engineer to implement water restriction stages.” Prior, it worked by automatically activating water restrictions 72 hours after the directive came from Metro Vancouver.
While Surrey and Vancouver account for half of the total water use each day, David Matsubara, Surrey’s director of utilities, told Daily Hive in an interview that they are “looking to provide some flexibility for both our business and community to be able to continue to do the things we normally do without impacting service levels.”
He said in Surrey, they have the ability to monitor their water system by looking at pressure and flow in many different parts of the community to understand if water use and pressure are affected through daily use.
“What we saw was that there wasn’t markable change in the wrong direction, and we are actually seeing change in the right direction, so water use [is] going down, and therefore we didn’t see that it was as emergent for the City of Surrey to make big changes,” he said.
He said that Surrey’s water demand is “more or less unaffected by the water main issues” at the First Narrows crossing.
“And therefore we’re taking on a day-by-day approach to see how things are going, and if we need to change.”
He acknowledged that the regional pipes are all interconnected.
“Even though it’s one system, we don’t have uniform consumption, we don’t have uniform population density, we don’t have uniform land use. So each municipality is going to be in a little bit of a different situation, and overall, Surrey is consuming less water per person than more than half the municipalities in the region,” he said.
At the board meeting, Surrey city councillor Pardeep Kooner seemed to defend her city’s decision, saying there are just three things that Surrey is allowing that other municipalities have restricted: lawn watering for new homes or houses under construction with a permit required, pools to be topped up, and landscaping and pressure washing businesses to still operate with handheld machines.