Water restrictions issued by the Province of British Columbia may not match those set by the RDOS because they apply to different users and are managed at different scales.

• Provincial restrictions apply broadly and are intended for agricultural irrigators and commercial users with water licences for surface or groundwater.
• RDOS restrictions apply to all users connected to the small water systems managed by the RDOS, including both residential and agricultural users.

The percentage reduction in each water restriction stage is designed to give residents a general idea of how much they should reduce their water use. Much of the water used by a household in the summer is poured onto lawns, landscaping, and gardens, so focusing reductions on outdoor use has the biggest water conservation impact.

If a sprinkler or irrigation system usually runs for 30 minutes on watering days, then during Stage 2 restrictions a 20%reduction means running the system for 24 minutes instead.

Lawns do not need to be watered every day, or even every second day. Watering this frequently can create a weak, drought intolerant lawn with a shallow root structure that cannot survive without constant application of surface water.
Watering lawns deeply but infrequently forces the grass roots to stretch and grow down towards deeper water stores, creating a stronger structure and excellent drought tolerance. Just 1" (2.5 cm) of water applied per week, spread over one or two days is enough to keep grass alive during the peak of the summer. Some of the grass may briefly turn golden, but should bounce back when temperatures fall and there is more moisture in the soil.

Unsure of how much 1" (2.5cm of water) looks like? Try the Tuna Can Test: Place a tuna can, firsbee, or jar with a 1"/2.5 cm mark in the middle of your lawn at the start of watering. When the can/jar/frisbee is full, note how long that took and that is how much water your lawn needs per week.

Water conservation focuses on outdoor water use because it is where the most water is used and where the most water is wasted.

The average household in the RDOS uses about 400L per day in winter, mostly indoors. In the summer, this balloons to around 1000 litres every day, and most of that is poured onto lawns and landscaping.

By following water restructions and reducing outdoor use by just 20%, a household would save 200 litres (4 bathtubs) of water. To save the same amount indoors, water use would need to drop by 50% or more! That would mean 5 minute showers instead of 10 minutes, flushing the toilet only half the time, and washing clothes 50% less often.

...reducing the timer on the sprinklers doesn't seem so bad anymore!

Xeriscape does not mean zero-scape! There are dozens of ways to xeriscape your yard without resorting to rock. The word "xeri" just means "dry", so "xeriscaping" just refers to landscaping that needs little water to survive.

The Okanagan Xeriscape Association and Okanagan Basin Water Board are excellent resources for a low-water landscape revamp.

The Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS) has adopted a district-wide Regional Water Use Regulation Bylaw and a Regional Water Conservation Strategy specific to the Okanagan-Similkameen.

These bylaws guide how clean water is regulated and used across RDOS-owned and operated water systems.

They focus on:

• Water conservation and efficient use
• Sustainable water management
• Integration of extreme weather management recommendations, such as drought and flooding
• Inclusion of climate change considerations
• Consistent interpretation and application of water regulations

These measures support the responsible use of a limited and valuable resource.

The bylaws and strategies can be found in the Documents section of this page.

The Cross Connection Control Bylaw was presented to the RDOS Board in early 2021.

Once implemented, it will:

• Complete the unification of water use standards across all electoral areas
• Apply to RDOS-owned and operated water systems

There are three main types of drought:

Meteorological (weather-based) drought is the type that most people think of with drought. It is characterised by a lack of rain and/or snow over an extended period of time. A meteorological drought doesn’t mean zero rain although that can happen. It simply means that the amount of snow or rain is significantly lower than normal. For instance, the City of Penticton received just 30% of its normal amount of precipitation from January-May 2026.

Hydrological (environmental) drought happens when there is a long period of reduced precipitation that has started to affect water levels on the landscape. Lake and river levels drop, and small creeks and ponds may run low or even dry. In severe droughts, such as this current year, groundwater stores will also be affected. Okanagan Lake did not reach full pool this season, and there are several aquifers in the RDOS that have reached their lowest levels ever recorded.

Agricultural drought is a combination of many factors and essentially means that there is a lack of water that is affecting crops and livestock. Both hydrological and meteorological drought can trigger an agricultural drought, but it can also be triggered by low soil moisture, prolonged high heat, or lack of water in reservoirs, among other things.

The RDOS is currently experiencing multiple types of drought in 2026. The City of Penticton, for example, only received 30% of the normal amount of precipitation between Jan-June 2026. Streamflows are so low throughout the region that the Okanagan Nation Alliance has closed their economic, recreational, and communal fisheries for the season to try and help preserve a salmon run.

Groundwater is all the water that has soaked down through the soil and is stored below the Earth's surface. It fills cracks, fissures and gaps in bedrock and underground sand beds. When groundwater collects in large underground areas, those areas are called Aquifers.

An aquifer is an area in a layer of the earths surface that holds large amounts of water. An aquifer is not a huge underground lakes like many believe (although those do exist), rather it is a layer of sand/gravel or porous rock that water can seep into and collect.

Water moves quite slowly once it seeps below the earth's surface, so an aquifer can take a very long time to refill, or recharge, if it becomes depleted from drought or overuse. Many RDOS water systems (plus anyone on a well system) get water from local aquifers, and many are at extremely low levels due to the last few years of drought.

Hydrophobic simply means that something repels water. The coating on your rain jacket is very hydrophobic, whereas the cotton shirt you have on beneath that jacket is not hydrophobic at all.

In a drought, the soil can become so dry that it will actually repel water (become hydrophobic) instead of soaking it up. This is because there are lots of naturally-occurring hydrophobic substances in the soil, but the constant presence of small bits of water in the soil during normal conditions helps bring that extra water into the ground. When there is prolonged drought, that small amount of 'helper' water in the soil disappears and those hydrophobic substances essentially seal the soil against absorbing water so any new water has a very hard time seeping in.

This inability to absorb water is why a day or two of rain cannot fix a drought - the water just pours off the surface of the soil into creeks, storm drains, or roads instead of sinking into the ground and recharging groundwater. Large amounts of heavy rain in a drought can cause flash floods.

After very long droughts, it can take years for water to penetrate soils to the depth it was at before.

Freshet is an overall term for the widespread melt of snow and resulting flow of that melted water from the mountains through streams and aquifers down to valley bottoms.

Freshet is an incredibly important source of water each year in the RDOS and pours hundreds of millions of gallons of water into local lakes and aquifers each year, recharging them from the lowest flows in the hot dry summer months. In years with very little snow, such as 2025/2026, lakes and aquifers don't get that much-needed recharge which can exacerbate streamflow and groundwater supply issues.

Xeriscape is simply a method of garden design that focusses on using very little water. It comes combining the Greek word "xeri" (which means dry), with "landscape".

It is a misconception that xeriscaping means rock landscaping. Rock designs can be incorporated into xeriscape plans if desired, but there are also many ways to design a xeriscape garden that have no rock at all.

A Cross-Connection is a connection (or potential connection) between any part of a drinking water system and any other environment that could allow contamination to enter the water system. Cross connections can be garden hose connections, submerged irrigation heads, swimming pools, fire sprinkler systems etc. Cross connections are concerning because if backflow ever occurs, the backwards-flowing water could carry contamination from the cross connection to the rest of the water system.

Read more on Cross Contamination Control in the RDOS here: https://www.rdos.bc.ca/utilities/water-systems/water-quality/cross-connections/