This week, Danielle speaks with David Slade, a water well driller in the Cowichan Valley. As the province’s March 1, 2022 deadline for groundwater license applications fast approaches with poor buy-in, Danielle and David discuss the potential groundwater crisis looming for B.C.’s aquifers.
Listen to “David Slade in the Cowichan Valley” on Spreaker.
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The Freshwater Stream is a podcast about B.C.’s watersheds and the people who care about them. Find out more and check out season one here. And please, if you like is, rate and subscribe on your favourite podcast playing app!
The Freshwater Stream is a collaboration between Watershed Watch Salmon Society and Canadian Freshwater Alliance.
Very informative. Especially on the issue of co management of the watershed. How does the Board allocate water say for agriculture at a time of the year when fish are struggling to get up stream. We need to hear how consensus is reached. How governance actually works in practice.
I personally can’t speak to the role played by the Cowichan Water Board specifically, but I will say that there are efforts are underway for improving watershed co-governance and increasing local decision-making power in BC. The province is currently developing a Watershed Security Strategy and Fund for 2023 https://engage.gov.bc.ca/watershedsecurity/process/ The public can provide feedback on it before March 18th at 4pm and CodeBlue BC has set up an emailing tool to facilitate submissions here: https://www.codebluebc.ca/watershed_security_strategy.
The province and Cowichan Tribes also reached a new agreement today to develop the province’s first Water Sustainability Plan for the Koksilah Watershed which will work to address water use and minimum flows for fish, which is encouraging.
I don’t understand why our local farmers have to curtail their water for crops that are needed by our communities when people are allowed to drill wells for watering their lawns , and we have at least two in our area, and water their lawns while the rest of the area is on restrictions… it is crazy….it does not make sense. Our farmers need much more support.