Water pours down out of the mountains and into the lake and it floods. This is trouble. Here’s one thing we can do:

Simple, really. We can store snow. 150 metres above the lake. Or higher. Note how planting a few trees helps. They can block the meltwater with their roots, and shade the snow with their branches. In fact, running all around Vernon is a walking trail built in the old Grey Canal. Perfect. We could do this with wastewater from the sewage treatment plant instead of pumping millions of litres into the lake.

Instead of dumping snow cleared off the streets down on the shore of BX Creek in the old bottomland wetland 1 kilometre from the lake, we could place it here instead. It could last 6 weeks longer, and remove a little flow from the lake, and here’s the thing: they’re all little flows. There are no big rivers flowing into this lake system. In fact, the biggest are probably storm sewers.