B.C. Finance Minister Katrine Conroy announced that $14 million has been earmarked to help pay for the long-sought replacement of the Cowichan Lake weir in the 2024 provincial budget, unveiled on Feb. 22.
With climate change and more extreme droughts every summer, which has seen water levels in Cowichan Lake and Cowichan River reduced to dangerous levels, impacting the local supply of drinking water and fish habitat, replacing the weir with a larger one to hold more water in the lake has been seen as increasingly necessary.