Doug McFee

Salmon River Enhancement Society

Groundwater review

The Ground Water Association has been working with the provincial government to finally enact a Ground Water Act.  The minister (Barisoff) has been quite open about the need for the environmental side to lobby for this or it won’t proceed past the first phase (a couple of times in the last 10 years an act was close and then the government of the day got “wet feet”). 

I talked with Dave Mellis who is President of the Ground Water Association of BC today.  The first phase of the Ground Water Act (BC is the only jurisdiction that has not had any ground water act so it has been “the wild west” up until now) is coming in November 2004.  It is going to address the specifics of certification of well drillers and pump installers and the technical issues of drilling and casing wells properly to avoid contamination seeping into the aquifer around the well casings.  . 

The next phase will start to address some of the bigger issues.  Wells will have to be registered (there has been only a voluntary registration up to now).  There will a requirement to cap artesian wells (the aquifer under the Salmon River in Langley has been dropping over a foot a year with a number of artesian wells being a part of the problem).  There will also be some regulations on water quality.   

The issue of dropping water tables which is the most important issue for many streams is not going to be addressed directly until the third phase and even then it appears that they will be looking at individual aquifer management plans (my experience with the Salmon River Watershed Management Plan put together over a 5 year period is that these plans take forever to put together, are expensive and may not be that effective or even may be ignored). 

The only regulation that protects water right now is that all wells that withdraw more than 1000 gal/minute need to have a permit (this would presumably be useful in the case of coal bed methane projects but only if the government decides to use their power to protect water rather than promote the mining projects).

Other provinces have at least some legislation to preserve water tables but in BC we are likely looking at several years before the third phase is put into effect.  Getting the government to put enough teeth into the third phase to make it effective will need an ongoing lobbying campaign by environmental groups.   

Dave also mentioned that a big part of the falling water table problem is not withdrawals but lack of recharge to the aquifers as rainwater does not find its way back into the ground since it is directed away by pavement, roof tops and other landscaping that doesn’t absorb water well.  This is another big topic that relates to how we develop land.  There are better ways to do it but municipal governments and developers have not been very quick to change. 

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