ICAN’s water security team and the We Wai Kai First Nation have embarked upon an exploration of Quadra Island’s water systems.
While this is a Quadra study, everything they are doing is applicable to Cortes and every other British Columbian island where there is a sizeable population. They are offering a model of how we can prepare for the future.
“The project started a number of years ago, really centered on the concerns of local people on Quadra about the nature of their water supply. People were really worried about what was going to happen with both climate change, whether it’s going to be getting hotter (particularly in the summers) and with development. Every new person that moves on to the island usually sinks a well. If they sink a well, they’re pulling quite a bit of water out of the aquifer. We wanted to know, would the aquifer actually meet our needs? Also, what needs does the environment have? And what will happen when things like climate change influences the availability of water,” explained Colin Chapman, who, together with his partner Claire Hemingway, is a key leader in this project.
“We were the grant writers behind the project. Both of us have PhDs in biology. I was at McGill University for a number of years, and the University of Florida. Claire was working for the National Science Foundation in the U. S. I’m a tropical biologist, so I have a lot to learn about BC and BC systems, but I’m learning fast.”
“Every time you brush your teeth, take a glass of water, or go to the bathroom, you’re using water out of the aquifer. Just imagine an island where water became scarce. We’d all have to not water our gardens. We’d be rationing how we would actually use water, and it just wouldn’t be as pleasant as it is now.”
“We use water a lot. The average household uses over 300 gallons a day. So we really have to be concerned about having enough water to meet our needs.”
“Claire and I just moved here a couple of years ago. We bring some scientific knowledge about aquatic systems and we bring abilities to write grants.”
“We heard the concerns of local people. We looked for grants that we could write and we teamed up with Wei Wai Kai, particularly Jason Price.”
“It’s a concern, of course, of the band. So we teamed up with them, and wrote a series of grants.”
CC: Tell me the story from the grant writer’s perspective.
Colin Chapman: “Well, from a grant writer’s perspective, it’s really pretty simple. There are calls put out there by the government, by foundations. So you literally just go on the web, search for calls for grants that fit our needs and then we to apply for them. We often write many, many proposals for the ones we get. It’s a challenging business. If you write 100 grants, you might get 5. So you have to write quite a few grants to be able to be successful.”
CC: Don’t the grants usually come with stipulations?
Colin Chapman: “They do. Part of the skill of grant writing is to figure out which grants are most applicable. How can you bend what you’re asking to meet what the grant wants and what you want? It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge. I also write grants for our work in Africa. So we’re probably writing 30-40 grants a year.”
“The Indigenous Watershed Grant is the one that came through. That’s enabled us to really mobilize, buy the equipment we need, and start collecting data.”
He subsequently emailed that Jason Price, from the We Wai Kai, administers the grant and is in charge of the training component.
There are three components to the grant. Cortes Currents will be looking at mapping wetlands and well monitoring in subsequent broadcasts. Colin and Claire are involved with monitoring the rainfall and streams.
Colin Chapman: “We’re trying to figure out a water budget for the island. So in collaboration with people from Vancouver Island University (VIU), Jerome Lesemann, we are monitoring rainfall.”
“Water comes from the sky onto the land. We have three meteorological stations that’ll be in the South Island. We will be collecting other rainfall data through citizen science, having people collect rainfall and maximum temperature near their homes.”
“It’s just simple weather data. Here at our home we have a rain gauge, which tells us the number of millimetres of rain that fall each day. We go out and read it every morning.”
“We’ll find out how much water is coming onto the island, and then we measure the discharge through streams. We’re looking at five or six major watersheds and we’re basically measuring how much of the water that comes onto the island through rain goes off the island through the streams.”
“We have equipment we take to the streams at least once a month, and we monitor literally the number of liters of water that passes by the sensor per minute. Basically, we stand in the middle of the stream and take about 20 to 30 measurements per stream per time.”
“So we’ll know the amount of water going out of the stream and into the ocean. That’s not going into the aquifer.”
“We’re also really involved with the salmon group. Some of the data we collect, like the oxygen levels and temperature levels that we’re collecting on the streams are very relevant to the types of questions they’re asking, like survival of the salmon fry, etc.”
CC: What will happen to the data you collect?
Colin Chapman: “Once we have that information, we’re not going to be deciding what’s going to be done. The big thing we want to emphasize is that this is a community effort and we’re going to be collecting information that will make it totally available for everyone to interpret the raw data, to look at whatever information we get. The information will be open for people to evaluate. Are we pulling too much water out? What is the risk? We’ll provide the information and then the community really has to make decisions on how they want to operate if there is a risk.”
Top image credit: The water cycle – courtesy US Geological Survey (Public Domain); All other images were taken from an ICAN Water Security Team slideshow
Links of Interest:
- How the WE Wai Kai/ ICAN Water Security Team Partnership came into being
- Mapping Wetlands on Quadra, and what that means on Cortes
- Joint We Wai Kai/ ICAN Water Security Team Monitoring Quadra Island Wells
- Modeling Hydrostratigraphy on Quadra Island, BC
- Colin Chapman’s website
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