More funding is needed for the long-sought replacement of the Cowichan Lake weir.
In a letter to the province’s Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, dated June 19, 2025, the Municipality of North Cowichan’s council urged the committee to consider more provincial funding for the weir-replacement project in the 2026 B.C. budget.
Although Cowichan Tribes and the Cowichan Valley Regional District are in charge of the project, North Cowichan council said in its letter that, as a member of the technical working group for the project, the municipality has a vested interest in the long-term health of the connected water systems from the watershed’s upper reaches to the tidal zone and beyond, and told the province that project is in the best interests of the entire region.
The Citizen has reached out to the CVRD and Cowichan Tribes to find out how much more funding is required.
It was anticipated last year that sufficient funding from senior levels of government had been attained for the project to proceed after the province committed $14 million to match financial commitments from the federal government for the much-needed new weir.
In response to North Cowichan’s request for increased provincial funding, the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship acknowledged in a statement that the Cowichan watershed is a vital source of freshwater that supports drinking water, critical fish habitat, cultural use and a diverse regional economy for Cowichan Tribes citizens, local residents and the broader community.
But the ministry pointed out that from 2019 to 2024, the province provided more than $18 million to project partners to offset costs to design a new weir, model upstream impacts, and offset construction costs, on top of the $14 million that was committed last year.
The ministry's statement said the province is supporting Cowichan Tribes and their partners, the Cowichan Watershed Board and the CVRD, with efforts to replace the weir to improve storage capacity and help ensure ecological functioning of the Cowichan River into the future, and the next step is for the project partners to apply to B.C. for a licence to construct the new weir.
“The ministry continues to keep our commitment to work collaboratively with First Nations to steward natural resources, and we are working closely with Cowichan Tribes and their partners,” the statement concluded.
The construction of a new weir has been studied and discussed for many years.
The current weir, located at the mouth of Cowichan Lake in the Town of Lake Cowichan, was built in the 1950s, mainly to provide industrial water storage for the Crofton pulp and paper mill.
But the weir was not designed to hold the additional and necessary volume of water to sustain the river flows that is now needed, nor does it meet today’s engineering standards required for expansion of storage capacity.
The weir is owned and operated by Domtar, under licence from the province.
In 2018, with the support of the province, the weir’s stakeholders developed the Cowichan Water Use Plan, which resulted in a broad consensus to replace the existing 97cm weir, with a new structure that would be 70 cm higher.
