A pond being carved from the forest
Water

Quadra Island’s water problem

Quadra Island’s groundwater appears to be disappearing. 

“We need to figure out where it’s going, how much we have that we don’t know about and then how we can make sure that not just the people on Quadra, but also the environment and businesses get what they need,” said Jude McCormick, leader of the Quadra ICAN water security team.  “It is a Herculean task and the first part is to make people aware that we have a problem.” 

Photo credit: Jude McCormick, Kris Wellstein and Bernie Amell, of the Quadra ICAN Water security team with IBC water totes – courtesy Quadra ICAN

In the first of a series about Quadra island’s water issues, four members of the team explain how they know the water is disappearing. 

McCormick is a retired nurse and no stranger to water shortages. Prior to moving to Quadra in 2005, she lived through seven years of drought in California. 

“Literally, we had one day of rain. So the conservation of using every ounce of water: saving everything from the shower; not just letting things go down the drain; walking buckets of water to your garden. I know how difficult it is, and I also know how people will not give up the idea of a green lawn. Even in the midst of a seven year drought, people were painting dirt green so that they had green around their house.”  

Southern Discovery Island chart compiled and adapted from materials on the iMapBC website by Roy L Hales Note: red aquifers are considered to be ‘high’ risk; orange is ‘moderate’ and green is ‘low’ risk.

When McCormick and her husband purchased their property in Granite Bay, fifteen or sixteen years ago, the micro-hydro system they installed was able to meet all of their energy needs aside from a short period between late August and mid September. 

“Last year, we had micro-hydro for about two months. That is a huge change. Our domestic water has stayed pretty steady, we haven’t lost any of that – we just notice much lower pressure. So the showers are not as refreshing,” she said. “To me it is really scary, because all of our power and our domestic water comes from water right around us. If it is disappearing, I can only imagine what is happening on the rest of the island.”

Areas of concern (red and yellow) in the mid Quadra Island adapted from the iMapBC website by Roy L Hales

Bernie Amell is a ‘retired’ landscape architect, who specialized in water treatment for the past 25 years. He calls himself an ‘environmental designer’ and is in the midst of a couple of biofiltration research projects to improve water quality. In one of them, Amell successfully cleaned up the storm water from an industrial area in Okotoks, Alberta, and is feeding it into a riparian forest. He holds three patents in this field. 

There are a lot of ancient cedar stumps on the 64 acre property that Amell owns in Cape Mudge, but only two extant cedar trees today. Neither of them are young.

“There is a lot of terrain with deep organic soils and shallow ground water. It should support cedars. Now there are other cedars on this island that are quite healthy. In the deeper hollows that are  near streams, there is good groundwater emergence, but there are other areas like ours where the species of the forest are obviously shifting,” he said. 

The Sitka Spruce on his property are also exhibiting signs of stress, like excessive cone bearing. 

Amell describes observations of nature as better than yearly climate records because you “see how the species composition is changing over time.”    

Areas of concern (red and yellow) in the Heriot Bay – Quathiaski Cove area – adapted from the iMapBC website by Roy L Hales

You may have seen Kris Wellstein in front of the post office in Quathiaski Cove on a Friday, between 2 and 4 PM. She runs the ‘Friday’s for the future information table,’ which is devoted to all topics of importance on the island. The whereabouts of local wells is among them and she invites local residents to mark the location of their well on a map she is compiling. Wellstein describes herself as an ‘extreme environmentalist’ who is extremely involved in the community. She is also a former social worker, an ongoing equestrian trainer, and ‘has always been a farmer.” 

“I happen to think Quadra, and this area, is a little bit of heaven and my personal philosophy is to do everything I can for my backyard. And I am learning as I go, as an eight year member and now care person of the Quadra Island Conservancy And Stewardship Society,” she said.

Areas of concern (red and yellow) in the southern tip of Quadra Island adapted from the iMapBC website by Roy L Hales

Wellstein originally lived in Bold Point, where she never had to water during the summer. Moving to the Southend 10 or 11 years ago, she initially had a lush lawn that needed very little watering. 

“Now there is no lawn in the summer, it is just ground. The cedar trees are all flagged this year. Last year, all the fir trees were flagged. I’ve never seen that before and some of the smaller ones haven’t survived at all,” she said. 

She maintains a swallow box, as did the previous owner of her property.  

“Last year, when that heat dome hit it killed the baby swallows just before they left their nest.” 

Mike Gall describes himself as a ‘bit of an activist.’ He is the local FireSmart representative, has been a Fire Captain on the Quadra Island Fire Department, and is developing a sprinkler protection system to protect homes threatened by wildfires. Gall lives on a small scale farm and grows about 70% of his food. 

He cited the data from Provincial Groundwater Observation Well #383, near the corner of Heriot Bay and Smith Roads, which has been operational since 2008.

Groundwater levels recorded at Observation Well #383 – Courtesy BC Government

“The aquifers they are monitoring appear to have been in decline over that 12 year period. So there is a recharge process during the winter and a draining process during the dry summer months. But if you look at the totality of the graph, it is on a gradual sloping decline averaged out over all those years – and it hasn’t changed. That rate of decline remains consistent.”    

Top photo credit: Building a 4 ponds system with integrated wetland filtration. There is well over 1,000,000 litres of water storage in the lower section and another 60,000 litres in the upper recreation pond – Photo by Mike Gall.

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