Category Archives: Water

Water

When it comes to water security, small rural communities in B.C. largely left high and dry

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C.’s small rural communities striving for water security as droughts become the norm still sink or swim without much assistance from the province, policy experts say.  

Most of the province has been in the clutches of unprecedented — but long anticipated — climate-induced drought for most of the summer. About 55 per cent of B.C.’s water basins are at Level 5 on the provincial drought scale — the point when adverse socioeconomic or ecosystem impacts are almost certain. 

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Water

Small island community launches big effort to develop water security

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Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As a landscape architect specializing in wetland restoration, Bernie Amell knows how water moves across the landscape. 

However, he has had a crash course in drought after Amell and his wife moved to their Quadra Island agricultural acreage on B.C.’s so-called “Wet Coast” three years ago. 

“We arrived in 2021, in the ‘heat dome’ summer, and the shallow well dried up,” said Amell, a member of Quadra Island’s Climate Action Network (I-CAN).

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Energy, Food, Waste, Water

What Quadra ICAN accomplished in 2022

According to the 2021 census, 36% of Quadra Island’s population is 65 years old or older. That’s 10% higher than throughout the Strathcona Regional District (SRD) as a whole, which has a considerably higher proportion of seniors than most of the province. The only Area in the SRD with a larger percentage of seniors is Cortes Island, where that number is 38%. Some might regard that large number of retirees as a problem, Quadra ICAN’s new Coordinator, Ramona Boyle,’ describes them as an asset that was responsible for much of her organization’s accomplishments during 2022.

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Rivers & Oceans, Water

Reflections on the extraordinary power of slow water

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The advance of the climate crisis, marked by its extremes — droughts or deluges, fires or floods — makes abundantly clear the human habit of trying to contain and control water isn’t working. 

For her new book, Water Always Wins, National Geographic Explorer Erica Gies criss-crossed the globe, witnessing some of the unanticipated results of modern society’s preference for engineered solutions. 

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Water

Harvesting Rainwater on Cortes and Quadra Islands 

There have been many droughts in Vancouver Island’s history. A University of Victoria study of tree ring data found that some were worse than anything in modern records, but also predicted a mega-drought is coming. This year’s wet Spring may make a difference, but there have been reports of wells running dry every summer since 2014. Consequently, increasing numbers of people throughout the Gulf Islands, Vancouver Island, Quadra and Cortes Islands have turned to rainwater harvesting.

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