Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee regular meeting, September 1, 2021

[0:00:00] Voice 8: Water Sustainability Project, and this is a report

[0:00:05] Voice 8: both from the freshwater specialist on our staff,

[0:00:10] Voice 8: William Shoba, who you'll be hearing from today,

[0:00:13] Voice 8: and also from our planning staff.

[0:00:16] Voice 8: And fortunately, the planner assigned

[0:00:19] Voice 8: to this Nerissa Chadwick, I can't be with us tonight

[0:00:24] Voice 8: because of a personal family matter,

[0:00:26] Voice 8: matter um but which is but she'll you'll see her in the future as we as this pro this project

[0:00:33] Voice 8: continues uh and we have our the island planner brad smith with us planner smith so nice to see

[0:00:40] Voice 8: both of you um so what we're going to do just to give you a brief outline is there's going to be a

[0:00:46] Voice 8: rather fulsome presentation uh over the next hour or so uh and as i said this is this is about our

[0:00:55] Voice 8: our project, this is not about any particular application

[0:00:57] Voice 8: of any sort, but just about a broad general issue

[0:01:01] Voice 8: about water sustainability on Galliano.

[0:01:04] Voice 8: And because we as an LTC at some point,

[0:01:07] Voice 8: we'll be making a decision about how,

[0:01:10] Voice 8: if and how to advance this project.

[0:01:12] Voice 8: And then there'll be a Q&A session afterwards

[0:01:15] Voice 8: allow you to ask questions and get further information

[0:01:19] Voice 8: that you may wish related to the report

[0:01:22] Voice 8: report and the and some of both from a planning from the fresh water specialist so with that I

[0:01:30] Voice 8: think I'm just going to turn it over to William Shilbo the fresh water specialist thank you for

[0:01:38] Voice 8: joining us as always William it's great to see you and I'm actually going to for once turn my

[0:01:45] Voice 8: camera off because this is really about the staff's presentation to a large extent what you're going

[0:01:50] Voice 8: to see what the trustees are seeing pretty much we saw it a couple hours ago but pretty much for

[0:01:56] Voice 8: the first time as well so we're learning along with you so uh uh i hope this informed over to

[0:02:01] Voice 10: you william uh thank you chair rogers

[0:02:08] Voice 4: um so um yeah i'm i'm really um um excited and and grateful

[0:02:17] Voice 4: to have this opportunity to speak to the galliano community and i would like to um

[0:02:25] Voice 4: thank the local trust committee for allowing me the opportunity to present today as well as their

[0:02:34] Voice 4: ongoing commitment to groundwater sustainability on the island. The form here, let me share my

[0:02:45] Voice 4: screen just to make sure that that is going to work out well. So I'm hoping that everyone can

[0:02:53] Voice 4: see my uh intro slide um here um can i get just like a nod from you brad it's it's there okay

[0:03:03] Voice 4: thank you trustee wolverton uh so yeah again i would really like to thank the galliano island

[0:03:09] Voice 4: community for coming out to this information meeting uh the format that i'm going to go

[0:03:15] Voice 4: through is i'm going to describe um four different projects that have been undertaken under what is

[0:03:25] Voice 4: now known as the groundwater sustainability science program and actually galliano island was a um

[0:03:34] Voice 4: was a leader in in beginning to um identify groundwater resources much before i even started

[0:03:45] Voice 4: started my job here back in the early 1970s there was a lot of work on on the groundwater resources

[0:03:54] Voice 4: of on Galliano by mostly by the province in the early 2000s there was some dedicated work done

[0:04:04] Voice 4: on Galliano that was undertaken by the Islands Trust in concert with the local trust committee

[0:04:11] Voice 4: and that's what ended up establishing

[0:04:14] Voice 4: the development permit area

[0:04:15] Voice 4: for the elevated catchment areas for groundwater.

[0:04:18] Voice 4: And I'll touch base on that

[0:04:21] Voice 4: towards the end of the presentation.

[0:04:23] Voice 4: But really in the last few years,

[0:04:28] Voice 4: the Galliano Local Trust Committee

[0:04:30] Voice 4: was really forward-thinking in endorsing work

[0:04:37] Voice 4: work to update our understanding of where groundwater is recharging on the island. So

[0:04:45] Voice 4: how water falls from the sky and enters into the Galliano Aquifer. And as well as looking at

[0:04:53] Voice 4: how much water the island is using. So that's the ecosystems and domestic use and some commercial

[0:05:00] Voice 4: use in agriculture to assess how much groundwater is available now and by using that understanding

[0:05:11] Voice 4: we can move forward into a uncertain changing climate and determine the sustainability of the

[0:05:20] Voice 4: groundwater resource and by doing so implement certain policies and

[0:05:32] Voice 4: address coordination efforts as well as undertake some education and science and monitoring projects

[0:05:42] Voice 4: that not only calibrate the work that we've done over these few projects over the past two

[0:05:50] Voice 4: years, but also establish a long-term legacy for investigating how groundwater in particular is

[0:06:04] Voice 4: being used on Galliano and trying to identify the role of a changing climate on the groundwater

[0:06:13] Voice 4: water resources. Okay, so I'm going to move on. Just pardon me for a second. I'm just going to

[0:06:21] Voice 4: close my window because I hear some traffic.

[0:06:33] Voice 10: Thank you so much.

[0:06:35] Voice 4: And I should say that, yeah, I am

[0:06:37] Voice 4: should introduce myself. My name is William Shulba. I'm the Senior Freshwater Specialist

[0:06:42] Voice 4: at Islands Trust. And I am coming to you from Salt Spring Island today. And I'm very grateful

[0:06:50] Voice 4: and and honored to be working in in the in the Salish Sea and traditional territories of the

[0:06:58] Voice 4: Coast Salish people as well as I'm really grateful to have groundwater as my primary drinking source

[0:07:06] Voice 4: from a artesian well that I don't even have a pump down the well it just magically comes out

[0:07:14] Voice 4: of the ground and into my pump house okay so that being said let's let's move on um i'm planning to

[0:07:21] Voice 4: have this presentation around an hour maybe a little bit longer than that and then we'll open

[0:07:28] Voice 4: it up to question and answer at that time i'll ask the chair to to kick us off for question and

[0:07:33] Voice 4: answer um thanks so much okay let's just continue on um i always like leading with with this because

[0:07:41] Voice 4: because it really, the object of the trust

[0:07:45] Voice 4: that is extending from the Islands Trust Act

[0:07:50] Voice 4: really drives and focus my own perspective

[0:07:54] Voice 4: on how to approach groundwater science

[0:07:58] Voice 4: in the Islands Trust area.

[0:08:00] Voice 4: And you can read as well as I can,

[0:08:02] Voice 4: but I'll read the object of the trust.

[0:08:04] Voice 4: I think it's important.

[0:08:05] Voice 4: To preserve and protect the trust area

[0:08:08] Voice 4: and its unique amenities and environment

[0:08:11] Voice 4: for the benefit of the residents of the trust area and of the province generally. This is

[0:08:18] Voice 4: in cooperation with municipalities, regional districts, improvement districts, other persons

[0:08:23] Voice 4: and organizations and the government of British Columbia.

[0:08:30] Voice 10: I wanted to lead with this

[0:08:35] Voice 4: large

[0:08:37] Voice 4: movement that's called the Groundwater Statement and it's looking at global groundwater

[0:08:43] Voice 4: water sustainability and largely it's a call to action and you can go and learn more about the

[0:08:50] Voice 4: groundwater statement at groundwaterstatement.org and it's a group of scientists and practitioners

[0:08:56] Voice 4: and experts calling on action to ensure groundwater benefits society now and into the future

[0:09:03] Voice 4: I'm a signatory on this on the statement and a lot of the work that I'm doing is framed around

[0:09:14] Voice 4: collaboration, not only with my colleagues in the Islands Trust and in the province, but also

[0:09:19] Voice 4: globally. We're trying to address and put the spotlight on groundwater sustainability.

[0:09:30] Voice 4: And by doing so, we're trying to educate people on what groundwater is and looking to increase

[0:09:36] Voice 4: how we manage and govern groundwater sustainability on local and global scales. And this project

[0:09:43] Voice 4: and for the islands trust it's more of a regional project but really it's looking at this local

[0:09:48] Voice 4: scale looking at the specific needs and challenges and opportunities of the island and ultimately

[0:09:57] Voice 4: we need to invest in groundwater governance and management in order to ensure sustainability

[0:10:04] Voice 4: A really interesting, another interesting initiative is the groundwatervisible.org, and this is really interesting. This has just started. I just got an email from the famous hydrogeologist, Dr. John Cherry, about this project, and it's asking people to submit their stories about groundwater,

[0:10:29] Voice 4: water. And they're going to match that up with images and

[0:10:36] Voice 4: photos from professional photographers on on ground

[0:10:39] Voice 4: water. So it's just trying to take something that is largely

[0:10:42] Voice 4: subsurface in the ground and relating it to to, to people and

[0:10:51] Voice 4: how we can see it interact with the surface of the earth. And I

[0:11:00] Voice 4: initiative, and it's under the Groundwater Project. So I encourage you to go look at

[0:11:05] Voice 4: Groundwater Visible and also explore the Groundwater Project. There has been some

[0:11:13] Voice 4: really exciting science in the last 10 years trying to visualize how much groundwater is

[0:11:22] Voice 4: available. And this work is really exciting. The lead author is Dr. Tom Gleason. He is a

[0:11:32] Voice 4: hydrogeologist and out of he's out of the department of engineering at the university of

[0:11:38] Voice 4: victoria and what his team did is they looked at and combined over 20 000 different models of

[0:11:46] Voice 4: groundwater from across the globe and what they tried to do is visualize how groundwater how much

[0:11:55] Voice 4: groundwater is available so what the scale is showing is in meters so the dark blue purple is

[0:12:05] Voice 4: greater than 50 meters and the lighter stuff is from zero to 10 centimeters and what this is

[0:12:15] Voice 4: showing is that over a 50-year average I think it's per kilometer taking all the water that's

[0:12:23] Voice 4: underground and flooding it on the surface so it shows globally how much groundwater and this is

[0:12:32] Voice 4: fresh groundwater groundwater that's available for drinking not there's some deeper saline

[0:12:37] Voice 4: groundwater but that's not what this is showing and i i really enjoy this map because it really

[0:12:44] Voice 4: shows all the water all the groundwater we have on earth but also if you fix your eye on

[0:12:53] Voice 4: North America and Western Hemisphere, that there are areas of groundwater deserts juxtaposed to

[0:13:02] Voice 4: very rich groundwater environments. And in areas of such contrast,

[0:13:11] Voice 4: a changing climate as well as land use can really shift the amount of available groundwater

[0:13:21] Voice 4: water in these areas of contrast, whereby, like, say, in the desert, it's less sensitive and less

[0:13:34] Voice 4: vulnerable to change. So I really enjoy this article, and I encourage you to look at it. It's

[0:13:43] Voice 4: It's published in Nature, so it's a pretty big deal.

[0:13:48] Voice 4: So we're trying to do the same type of work on the Islands Trust Area, looking at the

[0:13:59] Voice 4: groundwater footprint of the Islands Trust Area.

[0:14:02] Voice 4: And this is a giant leap in evidence-based sustainability planning.

[0:14:08] Voice 4: Historically, the precautionary principle has aided planning through a lack of knowledge

[0:14:13] Voice 4: of groundwater recharge and availability and its vulnerability. With a changing climate and

[0:14:20] Voice 4: increasing societal stresses, increased population to the islands, elevating science and knowledge

[0:14:29] Voice 4: will strengthen the precautionary principle. And as we move into an uncertain future with a changing

[0:14:35] Voice 4: climate, we just simply cannot use the past to plan for the future anymore. So where does this

[0:14:44] Voice 4: all start and it really starts with grassroots people like islanders who care about their water

[0:14:54] Voice 4: and have the capacity to do something about it um so i encourage you to look to the polis project on

[0:15:03] Voice 4: governance their water sustainability project um and they have this really great handbook it's the

[0:15:11] Voice 4: the handbook for water champions and water champions are freshwater stewards and water

[0:15:16] Voice 4: on island water champions can hold governments accountable for undertaking science research

[0:15:23] Voice 4: planning monitoring um and management of freshwater and groundwater resources for the

[0:15:31] Voice 4: benefit of the community for a sustainable future um and i believe we've started um there's

[0:15:40] Voice 4: There's several water champions on Galliano Island, and there's the commitment of the local trust committee to undertake this work.

[0:15:51] Voice 4: and we are undertaking projects and we're pooling knowledge and by doing so and by by undertaking

[0:16:01] Voice 4: science by listening to to the island residents and their stories and and listening to traditional

[0:16:11] Voice 4: knowledge holders I believe that we're starting to come to a place where we can have shared

[0:16:17] Voice 4: visioning and we can set priorities and we can use science as a foundation um and this evidence-based

[0:16:25] Voice 4: process to to go forward um yeah i'll leave it at that and ultimately this project's fun

[0:16:35] Voice 4: mapping is art and um i have had the benefit to listening to and and gaining knowledge from

[0:16:47] Voice 4: from traditional knowledge holders, through storytelling.

[0:16:51] Voice 4: I've heard the live experience from islanders.

[0:16:54] Voice 4: I myself live on the Gulf Islands,

[0:16:56] Voice 4: and I've had the benefit of traveling around the islands

[0:17:01] Voice 4: over the past three years, four years that I've been at the Islands Trust,

[0:17:07] Voice 4: exploring freshwater resources and the role of the ecosystems

[0:17:12] Voice 4: and living through the seasons.

[0:17:13] Voice 4: and I'm kind of a techno nerd too so I really like technology and I've tried to blend these

[0:17:21] Voice 4: all together and really my exploration of groundwater resources is at this nexus of

[0:17:27] Voice 4: science and technology and art. So without further ado I'm going to jump into the projects

[0:17:33] Voice 4: and the first project that I'm going to talk about is called the Aquifer Conceptualization

[0:17:42] Voice 4: project and again this is part of the groundwater sustainability science program this is a trust-wide

[0:17:49] Voice 4: project but we're going to be focusing on Galeano for this presentation so as I mentioned before in

[0:17:58] Voice 4: the in my intro there that the object of the trust is to preserve and protect unique amenities

[0:18:05] Voice 4: and I will continuously hold that groundwater is a unique amenity in the island's trust area

[0:18:12] Voice 4: area. There's a plethora of reasons why, especially on how islanders use the water. But at a fundamental

[0:18:25] Voice 4: groundwater science point, groundwater on the islands is unique from anywhere else on

[0:18:36] Voice 4: the mainland, since all groundwater comes from meteoric water, which is rainfall, some

[0:18:44] Voice 4: some snow, some fog, and this is providing all the essential fresh water for life. There's no

[0:18:50] Voice 4: off-island imports of water to Galliano Island unless it comes on a boat or barge.

[0:19:00] Voice 4: In other areas of the province, there is significant amount of storage from year to year

[0:19:07] Voice 4: that can continuously supply aquifers through glaciers or snowpack. And on the islands,

[0:19:16] Voice 4: we don't have glaciers or snowpack and the storage that carries groundwater from year to year is

[0:19:23] Voice 4: either deep within the rock and subsurface or held in the ecosystems, which plays a very

[0:19:30] Voice 4: significant role in groundwater resources and aquifer health, which I will describe later on.

[0:19:39] Voice 4: Oops. So what is an aquifer? And I get this a lot. And I also hear from islanders asking, we want more aquifer mapping. And it's interesting that the term aquifer is also unique compared to the islands then, say, in the prairies, which is the Western Canadian sedimentary basin,

[0:20:10] Voice 4: and where you have these giant aquifers that are kilometers long and they're continuous.

[0:20:20] Voice 4: On the islands, the aquifers are much different.

[0:20:24] Voice 4: They're essentially basins.

[0:20:27] Voice 4: And the reason why aquifers are so unique is that, especially in the southern Gulf Islands,

[0:20:35] Voice 4: that there is a lot of topographic relief.

[0:20:39] Voice 4: So there's a lot of highlands on the island compared to the area of the island, and it's surrounded by the ocean, by the sea.

[0:20:50] Voice 4: So that creates a really unique environment.

[0:20:54] Voice 4: That's why there's many watersheds across the island, because of this tall topography and a relatively small area.

[0:21:07] Voice 4: area. The BC government says that an aquifer is a subterranean geological unit that can

[0:21:15] Voice 4: store and transmit water in useful quantities for domestic, industrial, and ecological use.

[0:21:26] Voice 10: Okay, I'm seeing chatting. I don't

[0:21:31] Voice 4: know if that was supposed to happen. Okay, let me

[0:21:36] Voice 4: keep going. So I'll be the bearer of bad news that there's not much aquifer mapping on Galliano

[0:21:48] Voice 4: Island. Essentially the entire island is mapped as one aquifer, which is aquifer 320, which is

[0:21:56] Voice 4: listed here. This is some of the other aquifers in the Southern Gulf Islands. And there's a reason

[0:22:04] Voice 4: for why these other islands have discrete aquifers, either it's due to geology, or it's due

[0:22:12] Voice 4: to the fact that some of them are actually sand and gravel, like on Salt Spring Island.

[0:22:19] Voice 4: But I'll take this opportunity to, I'm just beyond joyful that this summer I had a co-op

[0:22:28] Voice 4: student, Alexander Headley, and he was our watershed ecosystems technologist, and also

[0:22:34] Voice 4: a mapping wizard so we spent half of his um co-op term to create the islands trust freshwater atlas

[0:22:42] Voice 4: and we just finished it this week so it's a little bit buggy so it's not public yet but

[0:22:48] Voice 4: ultimately the my my purpose of working in the public service is to take this science and data

[0:22:57] Voice 4: and and mapping that has been largely supported and paid for by the public and make it publicly

[0:23:05] Voice 4: publicly available. And I believe that the Island Stress Freshwater Atlas is a good start. There's

[0:23:10] Voice 4: a plethora of other mapping products in the province that have a lot of this data already.

[0:23:19] Voice 4: We're just trying to frame it in an island way. And I'm really excited about this.

[0:23:25] Voice 4: um so another oh yeah i should yeah i'm gonna break into this now sorry um okay so there isn't

[0:23:37] Voice 4: a lot of aqua mapping on galliano but what we have done is and we this this is the royal we

[0:23:47] Voice 4: for the past 40, 50 years is to organize Galliano Island

[0:23:53] Voice 4: into groundwater regions or what are known

[0:23:57] Voice 4: as water management units in some circles.

[0:24:01] Voice 4: And this is for land use planning

[0:24:03] Voice 4: as well as water authorization.

[0:24:05] Voice 4: So the province will use these groundwater regions

[0:24:08] Voice 4: to identify water balance, for example,

[0:24:12] Voice 4: for a water license application

[0:24:17] Voice 4: or for other types of water authorizations management

[0:24:21] Voice 4: that they do.

[0:24:22] Voice 4: And this will be the main unit of inquiry for this project.

[0:24:29] Voice 4: And I enjoy this unit

[0:24:35] Voice 4: because it's in the groundwater science world,

[0:24:39] Voice 4: this was what's called an intermediate unit.

[0:24:41] Voice 4: so a local unit would be say a particular parcel and then a regional unit would be the entire

[0:24:49] Voice 4: island and a lot of the science that has been done in the in the southern gulf islands has been

[0:24:55] Voice 4: either at that regional scale looking at the island as a whole or an individual lot looking

[0:25:04] Voice 4: at pump tests and maybe a few observation wells in the area. The exciting thing about groundwater

[0:25:12] Voice 4: regions is that it's of the same size as zoning in a way. It's comparable and ultimately it's

[0:25:22] Voice 4: the neighborhood scale. So it's almost like a pod where you can understand how much water that's

[0:25:34] Voice 4: available for not only yourself like say through a pumping test if you have to do that um but really

[0:25:41] Voice 4: it's looking at the neighborhood scale and and at the end of my presentation we'll talk a little bit

[0:25:47] Voice 4: more about um how powerful that can be for ensuring sustainability

[0:25:53] Voice 10: moving forward okay

[0:26:02] Voice 4: and um

[0:26:03] Voice 4: so how we define groundwater regions they've been defined in the past um bill hodge defined it way

[0:26:10] Voice 4: way back in the 70s so that's from we have these groundwater region defined from previous

[0:26:17] Voice 4: studies but throughout the recent course of history we've gotten a lot better data especially

[0:26:25] Voice 4: for topography and so we have updated watershed mapping and now we have a lot of we have understanding

[0:26:34] Voice 4: of where the wells are through well registries so we can look at water wells of concentration

[0:26:39] Voice 4: which is that neighborhood idea, as well as in better geology mapping, as well as the aquifers,

[0:26:49] Voice 4: which on Galliano Island is not that big of a driver. And so these groundwater regions have

[0:26:56] Voice 4: been updated. Another significant element of aquifers is the geology that they're comprised

[0:27:07] Voice 4: surprised of. Galliano is mostly dominated by the Gabriola formation, which is part of the Nanaimo group. And it's, it's a sedimentary type rock, so it's, and I don't want to really get into the geology of it.

[0:27:28] Voice 4: there's some really great references on the southern gulf islands for geology

[0:27:32] Voice 4: but for really the first time it's been brought together in a cohesive way

[0:27:39] Voice 4: in the island stress freshwater atlas and um yeah and it's really exciting to see how the

[0:27:47] Voice 4: the geology is similar from island to island and um and i just find this really exciting and

[0:27:54] Voice 4: And knowing the geology is really helpful for understanding how groundwater behaves in the island.

[0:28:05] Voice 4: Through the BC Wells Registry, we have unprecedented access to groundwater wells data.

[0:28:15] Voice 4: And I'm at a hazard of breaking my presentation.

[0:28:19] Voice 4: I just want to show one nifty thing about the Island's Freshwater Atlas, if I can.

[0:28:26] Voice 4: so i hope you're still seeing my screen and so this is um galliano island again and this is the

[0:28:33] Voice 4: freshwater atlas in motion and we're starting to play around with some tools where this is

[0:28:38] Voice 4: interesting tool where you can search for an address or choose one on on the land and create

[0:28:46] Voice 4: a buffer and this is a one kilometer buffer around any point and then it will report back to you in

[0:28:55] Voice 4: in this case, the groundwater wells

[0:28:58] Voice 4: that are located in that region.

[0:29:02] Voice 4: And this is also really rich data.

[0:29:04] Voice 4: You can click on any one of these wells.

[0:29:06] Voice 4: If I can, I don't know, maybe it's frozen now.

[0:29:10] Voice 4: Yeah, it seemed to have frozen, there we go.

[0:29:12] Voice 4: And so you can, yeah, see, it's still experimental.

[0:29:17] Voice 4: I was hoping that I could click on a well

[0:29:20] Voice 4: and show you what comes up, but till for another day.

[0:29:24] Voice 4: But an interesting thing is that you're able to then, if you're so keen, to download this data and explore this data.

[0:29:34] Voice 4: So if it was working properly, hang on, let me try this again.

[0:29:41] Voice 4: Yeah, I'll have to.

[0:29:44] Voice 4: The joys of demos.

[0:29:50] Voice 4: Okay, so you can choose any location.

[0:29:53] Voice 4: You can put in a buffer distance and it'll bring up the groundwater wells and then

[0:30:00] Voice 4: hopefully we can click on one no it's it's broken yeah see this is why it's still in beta mode but

[0:30:06] Voice 4: anyway exciting stuff so we're trying to make um the data accessible and also give some really

[0:30:13] Voice 4: interesting tools and we're just going to continuously evolve the freshwater atlas to be

[0:30:19] Voice 4: more useful than it is for my demo right now okay um yeah i'll get back to groundwater wells later

[0:30:29] Voice 4: So, describing what is a groundwater well.

[0:30:34] Voice 4: A groundwater well provides homeowners and municipalities, industries, farmers access to water stored underground.

[0:30:43] Voice 4: Previous to the professional groundwater driller coming to the islands back in the 50s and 60s, largely groundwater was taken from shallow dug wells, if at all.

[0:30:57] Voice 4: um there wasn't many deep drilled wells so this is a newer resource younger than 100 years

[0:31:06] Voice 4: and um there's been an unprecedented amount of wells that have been um advanced into the

[0:31:15] Voice 4: the galliano island um so for the most part um i don't want to belabor this but um

[0:31:24] Voice 4: a well is a drilled hole in the ground and the majority of the wells are advanced into this

[0:31:32] Voice 4: fractured bedrock. Sometimes there's a liner, sometimes it's just open hole. There's often

[0:31:39] Voice 4: a surface seal to prevent water from coming down into the well. And I will describe in coming

[0:31:50] Voice 4: coming slides how these wells behave with these fractures.

[0:31:55] Voice 4: And as you notice this,

[0:31:57] Voice 4: even this water level depiction

[0:32:00] Voice 4: is not completely correct actually.

[0:32:03] Voice 4: So if you wanted to learn more about this,

[0:32:07] Voice 4: the Groundwater Association has a great handbook

[0:32:10] Voice 4: for the groundwater protection regulation,

[0:32:13] Voice 4: and it has a lot of great resources and references

[0:32:17] Voice 4: to what groundwater is and the regulations in the province.

[0:32:23] Voice 4: So I'm going to try this.

[0:32:25] Voice 4: Sorry, I just hit my microphone.

[0:32:29] Voice 4: We're going to do a little thought experiment.

[0:32:32] Voice 4: And so this is a hypothetical cabin on a ledge on an island

[0:32:38] Voice 4: and this could be anywhere.

[0:32:39] Voice 4: Let's pick like the center of Galliano Island.

[0:32:45] Voice 4: And this is a cross section.

[0:32:47] Voice 4: So what we did is we took a slice through the earth, and this is the cabin sitting on top of the hill.

[0:32:55] Voice 4: And as I said before, these aquifers are fractured rock, and they're water-bearing fractures, most of them.

[0:33:06] Voice 4: And these fractures can be very chaotic.

[0:33:09] Voice 4: So there's a lot of squiggly lines here, and one fracture looks a lot bigger.

[0:33:16] Voice 4: and some of these fractures can be like very straight but the way the geology is

[0:33:23] Voice 4: if you take a slice through them they can look this very weird way um so what happens is uh

[0:33:30] Voice 4: if you drill a groundwater well um a driller will keep drilling keep drilling until they

[0:33:37] Voice 4: interact and and reach an app reach a fracture and so this is the location where water will come

[0:33:45] Voice 4: into a well as the drillers if you ever drilled a well before you had someone drilling well for you

[0:33:52] Voice 4: and you stood around and you know watched your money tick away for every foot that they drilled

[0:33:57] Voice 4: you know that there was no water and then boom magically water 10 gallons a minute whoa where

[0:34:04] Voice 4: did all that water come from so it's all coming from this one fracture there's there's really

[0:34:10] Voice 4: little water between the surface and this fracture. So that's a key point. So what happens

[0:34:18] Voice 4: in the wintertime is there's a lot of water that gets dumped on the landscape in the wintertime,

[0:34:27] Voice 4: billions of kilograms of water actually. And what that does is it makes the island a lot heavier.

[0:34:37] Voice 4: There's all the lakes fill up and the ecosystems are all charged up and there's water running

[0:34:43] Voice 4: running everywhere. It's a lot of weight. And ultimately, the island bedrock is pretty

[0:34:51] Voice 4: competent. So it's not being compressed at all by that weight. So the resulting is, is

[0:34:57] Voice 4: that the pressure increases everywhere. And so that's what these lines represent, lines

[0:35:04] Voice 4: of equal pressure. So if we look at this line of equal pressure that goes through a

[0:35:10] Voice 4: groundwater well there um there's it it kind of reaches the surface here on the right hand side

[0:35:17] Voice 4: and then equally the same on the left hand side outside of the island these pressure lines would

[0:35:24] Voice 4: be completely horizontal because the pressure would be the same everywhere on a horizontal line

[0:35:28] Voice 4: and so the when there's all this water that gets put on the surface these pressure lines will

[0:35:35] Voice 4: will will sag because there's more and more pressure down in the aquifer and what happens

[0:35:43] Voice 4: it's really similar to taking a can of soda taking a really sharp straw and jamming that

[0:35:53] Voice 4: straw into the into that soda can and the soda will rise up in the straw because it's under

[0:36:00] Voice 4: pressure. And that's the same thing with a groundwater well. So, and how much pressure

[0:36:09] Voice 4: there is, is where the, or sorry, what the water levels will be is the pressure that is released

[0:36:15] Voice 4: from the fracture will go up the well and finally equate with the pressure of the atmosphere to push

[0:36:23] Voice 4: it down if the pressure was so great the atmosphere had no chance it would flow out of the well and be

[0:36:31] Voice 4: a flowing artesian like the well at my house but for the most part most wells the atmosphere is

[0:36:39] Voice 4: heavy enough that the water level stops inside the well okay so what happens when it's the summertime

[0:36:47] Voice 4: time and you get a you get a cool sun coming out um there's water use from from wells and there's

[0:36:56] Voice 4: um ecosystems that are using the water a lot of this winter water finally has run off to to the

[0:37:04] Voice 4: ocean and the island is getting lighter and the the pressure in in the aquifers is getting less

[0:37:13] Voice 4: so in this case here the the pressure got lowered enough um that the atmosphere is pushing down and

[0:37:21] Voice 4: and it doesn't have to fight the water is hard so then the water level goes down okay so what

[0:37:29] Voice 4: happens when we get an a really hot heat dome sun and whoever played nintendo back in the 90s

[0:37:40] Voice 4: would know this sun um the the island can get really light because there's a lot more water

[0:37:46] Voice 4: use from the ecosystems and and there's a lot more gardening perhaps going on and water use

[0:37:52] Voice 4: and a lot more evaporation and here the the water levels here these drought water levels in this

[0:38:00] Voice 4: case is showing that the pressures are actually below sea level and to note notice that this

[0:38:07] Voice 4: this fracture where those well is, is well below sea level. And that's a lot of the aquifers on

[0:38:13] Voice 4: Galliano. The fractures are, sorry, a lot of the wells on Galliano, the fractures are well below

[0:38:20] Voice 4: sea level. But when this happens, some unique factors can happen when the pressure in these

[0:38:28] Voice 4: fractures drops low enough that salt water that is below the ocean, so this is ocean water here,

[0:38:35] Voice 4: and below the ocean is saline groundwater and there's this it's it's a density war between

[0:38:42] Voice 4: the freshwater and the saline groundwater the saline groundwater is more dense so it wants to

[0:38:48] Voice 4: come in and and and combat the freshwater so freshwater is less dense but the freshwater

[0:38:55] Voice 4: has the benefit of having a heavy island and topography to push against this the saline

[0:39:00] Voice 4: groundwater and they battle all year long and in the summertime when pressures get a lot lower

[0:39:07] Voice 4: inside the aquifer and inside this fracture saline groundwater can come in to the the fracture

[0:39:15] Voice 4: and to note this is just static water levels so this is without pumping often when when there's

[0:39:24] Voice 4: a pump in the well and water is being removed the the water level if it's in the winter and

[0:39:29] Voice 4: the summer or in drought the water level can drop a meter or several meters um during pumping and

[0:39:37] Voice 4: and that and during drought conditions during heavy use water levels can get really low um

[0:39:44] Voice 4: the pressure in the aquifer can and the fracture can get really low and then saline water has the

[0:39:51] Voice 4: ability to combat the topographic forces and and the density of the saline groundwater winds and

[0:39:59] Voice 4: and then it gets pulled into the well

[0:40:00] Voice 4: and that causes saltwater intrusion.

[0:40:05] Voice 4: So I just wanted to show this and I hope that was clear

[0:40:10] Voice 4: that the water levels in most groundwater wells

[0:40:15] Voice 4: on Galliano Island are not an ambient bathtub

[0:40:18] Voice 4: moving up and down.

[0:40:19] Voice 4: The water levels that are being monitored

[0:40:22] Voice 4: in groundwater wells is a function of pressure

[0:40:27] Voice 4: in a fracture.

[0:40:27] Voice 4: And now for one other, I'm going to take another gamble. This is my last slide for aquifer

[0:40:38] Voice 4: conceptualization and through with the fantastic work of GW Solutions in Nanaimo, we have created

[0:40:47] Voice 4: a 3D model of Galliano Island. So this is, we're looking at the south of Galliano Island

[0:40:54] Voice 4: and we can see that there these are all the groundwater wells and this is the the geology

[0:41:02] Voice 4: the joffrey formation and if i were to um take a slice uh through the island here let's just

[0:41:11] Voice 4: take a good old slice of the island um we can see how shallow the the groundwater uh wells are

[0:41:24] Voice 4: And in some cases, there's certain groundwater wells that are advanced into lower geology.

[0:41:33] Voice 4: And by using 3D modeling like this, we can really determine where wells are with respect to the ocean and how close they are together.

[0:41:48] Voice 4: also potentially which fractures they're drawing from. That's not on this model because this is a

[0:41:55] Voice 4: light version but on the full version each well has a has a fracture locator on it so in the

[0:42:05] Voice 4: future we'll be able to trace out the the fractures and to identify areas that are

[0:42:15] Voice 4: potentially water bearing how deep the fracture is if you're living way on top of the hill here

[0:42:19] Voice 4: and your fracture is way down here that's a long ways to go to get to that fracture. So

[0:42:25] Voice 4: there's some exciting stuff with respect to aquifer conceptualization and yeah again we're

[0:42:32] Voice 4: hoping to have this model, as it's called, available for public use. And we're working

[0:42:46] Voice 4: with this company Leapfrog and Sequent to actually put this on a website. So like I have a modeling

[0:42:55] Voice 4: computer right now, that's why it's so smooth. But we're hoping to have this on a website so

[0:42:58] Voice 4: so anybody can just go and explore the island

[0:43:02] Voice 4: using their website.

[0:43:04] Voice 4: Okay, so actually that demo worked.

[0:43:08] Voice 4: Nice, okay, let me get back to my PowerPoint.

[0:43:15] Voice 4: There we go.

[0:43:16] Voice 4: Okay, so let's move on.

[0:43:18] Voice 4: So great, we started a little bit late,

[0:43:22] Voice 4: so I'm gonna run a little bit long here,

[0:43:25] Voice 4: but we'll be, the groundwater recharge mapping project

[0:43:29] Voice 4: is gonna be the bulk of my presentation

[0:43:31] Voice 4: and the following two projects the groundwater availability is a little bit more brief and then

[0:43:39] Voice 4: the implementation is going to be brief as well because I'll lead it more into the question and

[0:43:44] Voice 4: answer so groundwater enters the ground through what is known as recharge and it discharges

[0:43:56] Voice 4: throughout the island mostly in the valleys sometimes on slopes so this is a from the

[0:44:02] Voice 4: waterscape series that was done for the gulf islands and this is bowen so i apologize for

[0:44:07] Voice 4: having bowen names on this but this is really great and bowen shares some characteristics with

[0:44:14] Voice 4: with galliano not geologically but in groundwater and high land so we can see that there's a

[0:44:21] Voice 4: recharge area where there's water that falls on the landscape it infiltrates through this the

[0:44:26] Voice 4: ecosystems and then eventually gets into the ground and then starts flowing through the ground

[0:44:32] Voice 4: and we can see here that there's some discharge and where there is discharge on a slope that will

[0:44:39] Voice 4: yield into springs so groundwater is leaving and discharging and creating springs there's also

[0:44:47] Voice 4: areas like high higher elevation lakes or wetlands that there's many of them on on galliano

[0:44:55] Voice 4: um that are uh local discharge areas so you can see this little arrow putting water into this lake

[0:45:03] Voice 4: but overall recharging the system and these are the most important features on the landscape

[0:45:09] Voice 4: are these high alpine wet air alpine um high um elevation um areas uh that are wet um and

[0:45:19] Voice 4: and have say that they're wet through the entire year

[0:45:24] Voice 4: and have permanence.

[0:45:26] Voice 4: And cause I'll continuously recharge in the biz,

[0:45:31] Voice 4: we call that a positive head boundary.

[0:45:33] Voice 4: So it's positively always providing water,

[0:45:36] Voice 4: no matter how much water is being discharged

[0:45:38] Voice 4: and used it by the ecosystems and evaporating

[0:45:40] Voice 4: and how much water is being used by groundwater wells.

[0:45:45] Voice 4: So I'll be talking about both recharge and discharge.

[0:45:50] Voice 4: So I hope that, I know that's, it's not really a technical term, but I hope that helped.

[0:45:55] Voice 4: And yeah, again, if there's any clarification of terms, if we don't have time in the question and answer, I'm always available for clarification in the future.

[0:46:08] Voice 4: So one of the coolest things about this project is that there was really no on the ground science.

[0:46:16] Voice 4: We didn't spend months and months and months walking around the landscape and measuring different things.

[0:46:25] Voice 4: The majority of this work has been done using existing data, and there's a lot of reasons for that.

[0:46:32] Voice 4: The Islands Trust area is really rich with existing data, and also it is a cost factor.

[0:46:41] Voice 4: This project wasn't a lot of money, respectively, to other large groundwater science projects.

[0:46:48] Voice 4: So one of the most exciting data sets that we just brought in was from space, from the Sentinel satellite.

[0:46:57] Voice 4: And this was work that was done by GW Solutions again.

[0:47:01] Voice 4: And we, the Royal, we mapped wet areas on Galliano Island.

[0:47:07] Voice 4: and that just leads me into the overall methodology I don't want to dwell on this

[0:47:14] Voice 4: because I think it's a lot but really this is showing all of the different data sets that we

[0:47:20] Voice 4: have brought together to identify groundwater recharge potential on Galliano Island and our

[0:47:29] Voice 4: grid size is 20 meters by 20 meters so if you have a large 10 hectare property there's multiple

[0:47:36] Voice 4: multiple grid cells within that property.

[0:47:40] Voice 4: So the data resolution is really rich.

[0:47:44] Voice 4: The one thing that I wanna show is that

[0:47:47] Voice 4: to understand groundwater recharge,

[0:47:50] Voice 4: we have balanced several different,

[0:47:52] Voice 4: what we call coefficients.

[0:47:54] Voice 4: So it's looking at topography, which is slope,

[0:47:58] Voice 4: water retention, so the role of the ecosystems,

[0:48:02] Voice 4: the role of climate,

[0:48:03] Voice 4: So how precipitation is distributed on Galliano and as well as geology.

[0:48:14] Voice 4: So liniments and faults, which are these linear features that are from either faults, which are big movements in rock or where two rock units are put together to create a contact.

[0:48:27] Voice 4: And these boundaries can transmit torrents of water.

[0:48:33] Voice 4: And they're really important for understanding how water gets from the sky to the ground into the aquifers.

[0:48:41] Voice 4: And then the first method of the Southern Gulf Islands groundwater recharge methodology, we didn't put in where water was discharging.

[0:48:54] Voice 4: So we overestimated recharge when we first started this project.

[0:49:00] Voice 4: And then over the last year, working on Denman and Hornby, this methodology was refined, and we have then used the space satellite to identify areas of discharge, and that got us a lot closer to a more realistic volume of groundwater recharge.

[0:49:22] Voice 4: Ultimately, forests are freshwater stewards, and healthy watersheds and thirsty trees support groundwater recharge and support soil moisture, a lot through what's called capillary pressure, also through some microclimate stuff.

[0:49:40] Voice 4: But we really focused on the role of ecosystems and how ecosystems contribute to groundwater recharge.

[0:49:51] Voice 4: charge. This was our first objective when looking at establishing a new methodology. I'll say that

[0:49:58] Voice 4: that methodology that I put up there originally started at the University of Vancouver Island

[0:50:04] Voice 4: by Graham Henderson, who is a groundwater scientist at the province. And then GW Solutions

[0:50:12] Voice 4: and myself and Alexander Headley, the co-op student, we refined the methodology over three years.

[0:50:18] Voice 4: and so anyway um i just wanted to open up this dialogue um because i think it's an important

[0:50:28] Voice 4: point of all this that thirsty trees make for healthy soils and moist soils

[0:50:34] Voice 4: and to simply put i'm not an ecologist or a botanist but um when trees are photosynthesizing

[0:50:44] Voice 4: they'll open up their stomata which are these uh little cells in their leaves and transpire water

[0:50:51] Voice 4: so water then gets lifted to the atmosphere and what that does is it creates a negative pressure

[0:50:57] Voice 4: and i won't dwell on that term but what that means is that water that's stored in the ground

[0:51:04] Voice 4: wants to make it to where the leaves have transpired water it's a disequilibrium and

[0:51:12] Voice 4: nature wants to wants to reach an equilibrium so water gets pulled into the trunk and then up to

[0:51:18] Voice 4: the leaves and this cycle continues but what that affords is that water that's elsewhere in the

[0:51:25] Voice 4: system and also water that's stored in the in the fractured bedrock comes up and hydrates the soil

[0:51:33] Voice 4: and then the tree has that accessible water and brings it into its roots and moves it up

[0:51:38] Voice 4: its stack and then out to the sky and this is really important because that affords the soils

[0:51:48] Voice 4: to act like a wet sponge and I know everybody I think most people out there know that

[0:51:55] Voice 4: a slightly wet sponge can absorb a lot of water a really dry sponge if you just pour water on it

[0:52:05] Voice 4: will just run off and and that's exactly what's going on with with with with tree with healthy

[0:52:13] Voice 4: trees using water promoting this this movement um and just one last thing on this i i worked on

[0:52:20] Voice 4: this project in the boreal forest where we uh instrumented is uh about a i think it was a

[0:52:27] Voice 4: thousand acre property um with groundwater wells and soil moisture and and gas exchange and and

[0:52:34] Voice 4: it was the most instruments I've ever seen on a landscape and it was slated for clear cutting

[0:52:39] Voice 4: and and so the the company went in and clear cut it but we left all of our instrumentation in there

[0:52:45] Voice 4: as a partnership program and in some areas the the water level the shallow water level in the

[0:52:51] Voice 4: soil has dropped 20 meters when the trees were removed so the trees through this capillary

[0:52:57] Voice 4: pressure really holds up the water and keeps the soils hydrated and they're really important

[0:53:03] Voice 4: in their role in groundwater recharge.

[0:53:10] Voice 4: They do do the opposite though,

[0:53:13] Voice 4: which is really interesting.

[0:53:14] Voice 4: So trees do intercept water.

[0:53:18] Voice 4: And in the first methodology

[0:53:20] Voice 4: in the Southern Gulf Islands recharge,

[0:53:24] Voice 4: I tried to address this, me personally now,

[0:53:28] Voice 4: and I gave the work to Dujubba Solutions

[0:53:31] Voice 4: solutions using the terrestrial ecosystem mapping which is a mapping thing looking at the ecosystem

[0:53:36] Voice 4: at the whole it largely didn't work and so what we did over the last two years was to look at the

[0:53:44] Voice 4: vegetation resource inventory from the province which looks at almost down to the tree level

[0:53:50] Voice 4: and we were able to determine through some really great science and I won't get into it now

[0:53:56] Voice 4: there's the the papers available or will be available with this project looking at how

[0:54:01] Voice 4: much trees intercept water and that was then put into the recharge mapping methodology

[0:54:09] Voice 4: which is a very important component of it as well okay and then so from from the the

[0:54:17] Voice 4: the satellite that I spoke to before we we found out where the wet areas are on the island and

[0:54:24] Voice 4: And this is really cool. If you know Galliano Island, there's these really interesting saddle wetlands in the uplands there.

[0:54:32] Voice 4: So, yeah, the satellites did pretty well.

[0:54:35] Voice 4: And so we took that data and compared it to where recharge will happen.

[0:54:42] Voice 4: So we have this balance between where discharge is happening and where recharge is happening.

[0:54:47] Voice 4: And ultimately, there's a lot more locations on the island where recharge is occurring, which is exciting.

[0:54:56] Voice 4: But also with looking at a water balance perspective, that there's just so much recharge on the island and it has to go somewhere.

[0:55:06] Voice 4: So a lot of it does go in the wells, but there's a lot of recharge to eventually discharge and support these finite discharge areas that are, you know, wetlands on the landscape.

[0:55:19] Voice 4: And yeah, I find this slide really exciting.

[0:55:24] Voice 4: So going through the methodology and looking at all these data, we come to the groundwater recharge potential map.

[0:55:32] Voice 4: And so what this is showing is not a millimeter value. It's not a volume. This is a potential for any 20 by 20 meter grid cell to recharge water relative to itself.

[0:55:51] Voice 4: So the most, the highest potential for recharge on the island is a lot of it's in the north in this area. And then the more lighter color is the areas of the island where there's a lesser chance of recharge or recharges is restricted for a number of reasons that I described in the methodology.

[0:56:18] Voice 4: methodology. There's a lot more work that we can do with this and like right now this is comparing

[0:56:27] Voice 4: the scale, this unit scale is comparing the entire island. So what we can do is break this down and

[0:56:35] Voice 4: look at the groundwater regions and compare each groundwater region and see within that groundwater

[0:56:39] Voice 4: region where there's the highest potential of groundwater recharge and when there's not.

[0:56:45] Voice 4: And that's just future work to be done.

[0:56:50] Voice 4: Okay, so now we'll get into the second last project that we have undertaken, which is engaging this recharge work and engaging the aquifer conceptualization work by understanding regionally how much groundwater is available for the Southern Gulf Islands.

[0:57:11] Voice 4: And the amount of groundwater that's available is really similar to a bank account.

[0:57:20] Voice 4: If you have a steady income, you get a steady amount of money going into your bank account and, you know, housing and food and fun that leaves the bank account.

[0:57:36] Voice 4: And very, you know, prudent. No, that's not the right word.

[0:57:42] Voice 4: you know, successful budgeters will ensure that they have a positive balance in their bank

[0:57:53] Voice 4: account. However, sometimes it's not the case. And there's a lot more spending when there's

[0:57:59] Voice 4: not as much money coming in. So seasonal workers like, I don't know, tree planters or something

[0:58:07] Voice 4: something like that, or more seasonal workers will get a whole bunch of money at one time

[0:58:13] Voice 4: and then spend it during the time when they're not. And hopefully annually that that budget

[0:58:21] Voice 4: works out. And that's really similar to water. You know, there's, but there's other things that

[0:58:28] Voice 4: can happen. You can get this sun guy coming in again, or like your car breaks down or there's

[0:58:35] Voice 4: emergency and there's a lot more money or a lot more water that gets used and and the whole system

[0:58:45] Voice 4: goes into debt and to understand the vulnerability of that debt and getting out of that debt is

[0:58:52] Voice 4: really the crux of sustainability um so i hope that analogy works um or metaphor i don't know

[0:59:00] Voice 4: it's probably both. Anyway, so I'll go through how we approached how much groundwater is available

[0:59:09] Voice 4: for Galliano Island. And so again, there's a whole bunch of data. We have a bunch of climate data.

[0:59:17] Voice 4: And that was put into this like gridded water balance thing, which is a bunch of science. And

[0:59:22] Voice 4: again, the report will be available. And if you're really interested, you could dig into it. But

[0:59:27] Voice 4: But ultimately, what groundwater availability is, is the balance between how much water is recharged.

[0:59:35] Voice 4: So it goes from recharge potential, which is the result of phase one, but then we actually poured the water on the landscape and to see how much volume recharge there is compared to how much is being used.

[0:59:47] Voice 4: And in the past, it was just these two that were done like on the back of an envelope kind of thing.

[0:59:52] Voice 4: But now we're really bringing in the concept of aquifers, how aquifers behave on the island, the role of what's going on.

[1:00:00] Voice 4: called hydrodynamics how water is flowing through the ground um and and all of these elements are

[1:00:06] Voice 4: really important and we're trying to put them together in a scientific way to figure out

[1:00:09] Voice 4: how much water is available um so how much does it rain this is important part and it doesn't

[1:00:17] Voice 4: rain uniformly across um galliano and it definitely doesn't rain uniformly across the

[1:00:24] Voice 4: island's trust area how sound gets way more rain than the southern gulf islands um and this is

[1:00:29] Voice 4: from modeling from the pacific climate climate impacts consortium um and is it a really rough

[1:00:39] Voice 4: estimate yes um can it be better yes and the way to refine this estimate is to um start monitoring

[1:00:50] Voice 4: rain and we can monitor rain across the island um in several different rain monitoring stations and

[1:00:57] Voice 4: get a better understanding for how much rain comes down but it doesn't fall uniformly and here we see

[1:01:01] Voice 4: that the north island uh north part of the island gets some more rain and so we have the groundwater

[1:01:07] Voice 4: recharge potential so so that rain was then poured on the island in its distribution and then we

[1:01:17] Voice 4: looked at how much water is being used so uh like i said before from the wells registry we have an

[1:01:23] Voice 4: understanding of where the wells are on the island and if if they're being used or not

[1:01:29] Voice 4: it's part of the wells record also there's from bc assessment we looked at

[1:01:37] Voice 4: how water can be used and this was a really rough estimate and there is some issues with this

[1:01:42] Voice 4: and the estimations is something that will need to be refined as we move into the future

[1:01:50] Voice 4: And that is going to be supported by water licensing, by water reporting, like demand, like flow metering and stuff like that that can refine our estimates for all these different types of uses, including a big one is irrigation.

[1:02:11] Voice 4: So the irrigation that was used to determine how much irrigation is used on the island was using the similar methodology as the agricultural water demand from the Ministry of Agriculture.

[1:02:24] Voice 4: So this is a island-wide view of how much water is being used.

[1:02:30] Voice 4: So again, we only have one aquifer, aquifer 320, and this is showing, sorry, this unit is wrong.

[1:02:36] Voice 4: This is DM cubed, which is decimeter, which is actually just one liter, but it's actually supposed to be decameter cubed, which is a million liters.

[1:02:46] Voice 4: So the total water usage annually on Galliano Island is around 800 million liters per year.

[1:02:57] Voice 4: By far and away, the biggest user is irrigation, but this is also just related to agriculture.

[1:03:07] Voice 4: But through the water demand model, it's also the potential amount of agriculture that can be engaged.

[1:03:16] Voice 4: So this water use can really be further refined and more dedicated studies.

[1:03:29] Voice 4: So I just want to make this really known that this project was actually not just for Galliano, it was for the entire southern Gulf Islands.

[1:03:37] Voice 4: So we didn't have the opportunity to dive into each parcel to understand what was going on.

[1:03:42] Voice 4: on. So this is a precautionary principle, conservative amount of water that we have

[1:03:47] Voice 4: addressed. Some water uses like the water supply systems, we got those data from either the supply

[1:03:54] Voice 4: systems or just rated other systems with equal amount of estimated water use. And speaking of,

[1:04:04] Voice 4: I'm just going to grab a drink because I've been talking a lot. And yeah, just to point

[1:04:10] Voice 4: order check in it's a quarter after six here so i'm around uh an hour and uh i promise i won't

[1:04:18] Voice 4: be talking too much more um we're getting really close to the end of the presentation so

[1:04:23] Voice 4: i see trustee rogers clicked in now we could still got some time okay so uh yeah let's dive

[1:04:31] Voice 4: in a little bit more so we can look at um groundwater use per groundwater region so this

[1:04:38] Voice 4: This is looking at the most northern tip of the island on the northwestern side, which

[1:04:46] Voice 4: is the populated side, the other one is the park.

[1:04:52] Voice 4: So this is a really interesting slide, and I really enjoy it.

[1:04:56] Voice 4: Again, SI units are wrong, it's DAM, millions of liters.

[1:05:01] Voice 4: so in this little tiny area of of um galliano there's like two billion liters of water the falls

[1:05:10] Voice 4: annually pretty wild um out of that a lot of it gets evaporated a lot of it gets transpired

[1:05:19] Voice 4: through plants and what's left is the surplus and from the surplus water the majority of it

[1:05:28] Voice 4: just runs off in the winter time and only a fraction of it gets retained through recharge

[1:05:35] Voice 4: and this is what i've this is all the data that i was describing before in the recharge project

[1:05:41] Voice 4: and this is the amount of water use that that is occurring so you can see these huge differences

[1:05:50] Voice 4: between the volumes and going into a changing climate the p kick the pacific climate impacts

[1:05:58] Voice 4: HACS consortium, but I'll call it P-KIC for now on, has estimated that the amount of precipitation

[1:06:04] Voice 4: annually in the southern Gulf Islands is not going to change that much, a few percent going

[1:06:10] Voice 4: into a changing climate. So the precipitation is going to hold about that. What's going to happen

[1:06:17] Voice 4: though is we're going to get more rain during the winter and longer drier summers, and we're

[1:06:29] Voice 4: likely go up so surplus will go down but also there's going to be a lot more runoff because

[1:06:37] Voice 4: it's in the winter time the aquifers are pretty much charged up and they can't you can't put any

[1:06:43] Voice 4: more pressure into those aquifers there's no more room for water to get in and so the runoff will

[1:06:49] Voice 4: go up and the recharge unfortunately will go down um and so we can look at this on a monthly basis

[1:06:58] Voice 4: And so this water budget's actually daily,

[1:07:00] Voice 4: but we have just, this is the most refined scale

[1:07:05] Voice 4: that we're looking at is the monthly data.

[1:07:08] Voice 4: And this is an early printout of the data dashboard

[1:07:14] Voice 4: that will be available for this project.

[1:07:17] Voice 4: And so I apologize for some scale issues.

[1:07:21] Voice 4: We need to work on that.

[1:07:23] Voice 4: But we can see here like on this side of the screen

[1:07:27] Voice 4: on the left hand side it's water use so the different types of water uses and and I'll

[1:07:33] Voice 4: fully admit we can do better by looking at irrigation and really drilling down like is

[1:07:39] Voice 4: there that much irrigation happening on the north tip of the island is a question for debate

[1:07:45] Voice 4: and for further inquiry but as we look at the recharge here per month really the recharge is

[1:07:53] Voice 4: topping out at around 30 to 35 million liters per month and really it drops off in the summertime

[1:08:03] Voice 4: when there's the majority of water use. So if there's more precipitation in the winter time

[1:08:11] Voice 4: it won't really be able to be recharged and it'll increase the runoff rates and so ultimately

[1:08:19] Voice 4: ultimately not making it available for humans and ecosystems in the drier months in the summer.

[1:08:28] Voice 4: And so I have draft stamped on this just because for those issues that I spoke of with respect to

[1:08:38] Voice 4: agriculture, but the final deliverable from the groundwater regional availability is how much

[1:08:47] Voice 4: recharge is being used compared to, and I dislike the term available groundwater, I would say it's

[1:08:57] Voice 4: the total amount of recharge annually. The reason why I'm uncomfortable with having this pie chart

[1:09:05] Voice 4: and saying the blue is available groundwater is because this is only the science and the water

[1:09:11] Voice 4: accounting in the model it doesn't consider the vulnerability of of the either the ecosystems or

[1:09:19] Voice 4: the infrastructure in that area and special conditions things like sensitive ecosystems

[1:09:26] Voice 4: and species at risk and it doesn't consider the ultimately the safe yield in some circles

[1:09:38] Voice 4: hydrogeologists say that once you exceed 15 percent of recharge you're you're getting into

[1:09:45] Voice 4: a territory of of non-safe yield some say 75 and and so this is an ongoing conversation that we

[1:09:54] Voice 4: need to address to identify what is safe yield um the exciting part is now we have all this data

[1:10:01] Voice 4: to enrich those conversations.

[1:10:05] Voice 4: So ultimately we want to look

[1:10:07] Voice 4: at groundwater region vulnerability,

[1:10:10] Voice 4: and this is the balance of the productivity

[1:10:12] Voice 4: of the aquifers versus the demand.

[1:10:16] Voice 4: And we can influence both of these sides actually

[1:10:19] Voice 4: to balance vulnerability.

[1:10:21] Voice 4: So for demand, we can ensure conservation,

[1:10:25] Voice 4: increase water literacy and education,

[1:10:29] Voice 4: like choosing landscaping and gardening that is maybe not reliant on groundwater,

[1:10:37] Voice 4: looking at some engineering stuff like engineering efficiencies, appliances, leak detection,

[1:10:42] Voice 4: and using alternative water supplies like rainwater and greywater.

[1:10:46] Voice 4: Also looking at license limits and license requirements from the province on licensed groundwater sources.

[1:10:53] Voice 4: You know, and also we can influence the productivity side by proper land use planning, restoration of sensitive ecosystems or important ecosystems for groundwater, proper forest management, looking at well density and addressing well density in certain areas, either through zoning or through establishing community systems, things like that.

[1:11:19] Voice 4: So, that being said, with taking all that information and addressing groundwater regional vulnerability, Island Trust staff, mostly me, with consultation with planners and some other technical staff, I looked at the groundwater recharge, the availability, saltwater intrusion risk mapping

[1:11:46] Voice 4: that is just about to be released for the region,

[1:11:50] Voice 4: as well as well density, I think I already said that.

[1:11:56] Voice 4: We have classified the island

[1:11:59] Voice 4: into four classes of vulnerability.

[1:12:03] Voice 4: And so the class one is the groundwater regions

[1:12:09] Voice 4: of highest vulnerability.

[1:12:11] Voice 4: And so these are areas that are in critical need

[1:12:14] Voice 4: of attention.

[1:12:15] Voice 4: attention. And the confidence in the data is high. Class two is areas that need critical assessment. So this is areas that are showing that they might be highly vulnerable. But there's some issues with the data or issues that are resulting from larger groundwater regions. So in the south here, this big centroid one, sorry, I should have put the names of the regions in here, I can't

[1:12:45] Voice 4: remember the name of this region but the majority of the region is is um not so populated but of

[1:12:53] Voice 4: course the coastal regions are so that takes more of a critical assessment to understand

[1:13:00] Voice 4: where the high vulnerabilities are class 3 is sustaining so the level of attention in these

[1:13:07] Voice 4: areas is moderate but if build out occurs or if license potential is maximized or if there's

[1:13:14] Voice 4: increased amount of irrigation and other water demands or if there's poor land use planning

[1:13:21] Voice 4: those areas may change from sustaining to a high vulnerability and then there's class four which is

[1:13:30] Voice 4: either non-critical or underdeveloped most of it is park or large forest lots that don't have a lot

[1:13:39] Voice 4: lot of water use. And yeah, ultimately, if you take away water use, the entire island's not

[1:13:49] Voice 4: critical. It's the water use that drives the high vulnerability of the island. And okay,

[1:14:02] Voice 4: so what can we do about it? This is my last slide for groundwater availability, and then we'll

[1:14:07] Voice 4: get into the implementation side we can monitor we can really understand how much water is being

[1:14:14] Voice 4: recharged and how much water is being used we can calibrate these methods we can run models

[1:14:20] Voice 4: on these methods and we can also understand what's happening year to year and we can see here that

[1:14:28] Voice 4: this year is the this is the observation well from galliano island run by the province and the blue

[1:14:35] Voice 4: blue line is the approved data so this is download legit data and the green line is

[1:14:41] Voice 4: the historical mean and the blue kind of haze here is the range of the absolute minimum

[1:14:50] Voice 4: and maximum over a 10-year period and we can see here between April and May that the groundwater

[1:14:57] Voice 4: water levels on galliano island were at the absolute minimum over a 10-year period and

[1:15:05] Voice 4: there is no way of knowing this unless there was monitoring there's proxies and we can yeah we were

[1:15:14] Voice 4: in a heat dome but to actually quantitatively understand what's going on and how much recharge

[1:15:21] Voice 4: there was in the winter time which was maximum amount of recharge in the winter time in november

[1:15:27] Voice 4: and December it was well above the the maximum so we had max we had we had record-breaking recharge

[1:15:35] Voice 4: and we have in the winter time and we have record-breaking drought in the summertime

[1:15:40] Voice 4: so how we do this um this is my hand and this is my logger and this is on Salt Spring Island

[1:15:50] Voice 4: so the province uses the same loggers um this one's really cool this like on the right hand

[1:15:55] Voice 4: side here this little window that actually looks at electrical conductivity which is a proxy for

[1:16:01] Voice 4: salinity so we can see if wells are getting more saline but ultimately this little hole on the

[1:16:07] Voice 4: bottom of this data logger so data logger is a sensor with a whole bunch of batteries in it and

[1:16:11] Voice 4: it collects data as much as you want mine collect every 10 minutes and so you put these data loggers

[1:16:19] Voice 4: down the hole and it senses the pressure of how much water is above the data logger and that can

[1:16:24] Voice 4: can be converted into the well water level.

[1:16:27] Voice 4: And this is a view of a really simple one.

[1:16:30] Voice 4: So on the right here, there's nothing in the well

[1:16:33] Voice 4: and it's just a data logger sitting on top of the well,

[1:16:35] Voice 4: or sorry, the data logger is inside the well,

[1:16:38] Voice 4: I'm downloading the data.

[1:16:40] Voice 4: And here the data logger on the left

[1:16:42] Voice 4: is in a very complex installation.

[1:16:44] Voice 4: And we had to, we used one of our talented pump installers

[1:16:48] Voice 4: to put down a PVC pipe here.

[1:16:52] Voice 4: So we weren't messing around with the landowners pump and we put our data logger way down inside that PVC that extended down to 300 feet in this well and I'm just downloading the data from the surface takes me about 1015 minutes quick chat with the landowner,

[1:17:09] Voice 4: and then I'm gone with the data and what the data looks like it can provide a long term view of seasonal groundwater recharge so this is a data in the highlands of Salt Spring Island.

[1:17:18] Voice 4: We can see that the water gets quite low in October, and this is a very good lesson, if you don't know it already, that the majority of groundwater drought happens later on into the fall, beyond the hot period of the year.

[1:17:34] Voice 4: We could see that this aquifer is really active, and once it starts raining, boom, it just recharges right away, and it stays recharged, and any other rain is just running off, and then as the users and the ecosystems and runoff continues in the aquifer, it starts decreasing.

[1:17:53] Voice 4: And here, from year to year, it's a little bit higher, and this was in 2019.

[1:17:59] Voice 4: 19. So my last few slides here, and I'll looks like I'll finish

[1:18:07] Voice 4: off around, we'll leave about half an hour for questions,

[1:18:11] Voice 4: which is kind of right on time, we started a little bit late.

[1:18:14] Voice 4: So this is a Galliano specific project that is intending to

[1:18:22] Voice 4: implement the science that that we have looked at, that I

[1:18:29] Voice 4: presented to you um but not blindly it's not the intention just to take all that science and just

[1:18:40] Voice 4: and just blindly do new bylaws um this is engaging in a conversation with um with the islanders i'll

[1:18:50] Voice 4: preface this after going through all of that stuff that sure there is myself i'm a professional

[1:18:56] Voice 4: hydrogeologist i've been working in groundwater for 20 years and the consulting company gw solutions

[1:19:02] Voice 4: has over 250 years worth of experience but we also had over a dozen professionals review this work

[1:19:13] Voice 4: so we had provincial hydrogeologists we had several um seasoned senior hydrogeologists some

[1:19:23] Voice 4: who are working on rezoning applications on galliano island right now um academics and

[1:19:30] Voice 4: uh the salt spring island watershed protection alliance the technical working group they review

[1:19:36] Voice 4: this work and then we use that review to strengthen the science and and now it's time to

[1:19:41] Voice 4: take the science that we're really confident of and and bring to the community and have a frank

[1:19:46] Voice 4: frank discussion if the science is it looks like it's realistic and then also how to implement

[1:19:52] Voice 4: the science in a way that will truly create a sustainable groundwater resource for future

[1:20:02] Voice 4: generations for the generations that aren't on this call or this webinar right now um so

[1:20:09] Voice 4: one way that we're doing that at the federation level is we're undertaking the freshwater

[1:20:14] Voice 4: water sustainability strategy and so the this program belongs in that strategy and it will be

[1:20:21] Voice 4: supported hopefully if the strategy is in development needs to be endorsed by trust

[1:20:26] Voice 4: council this year and if so the pro the groundwater sustainability science program is part of that

[1:20:31] Voice 4: and going forward we're hoping for support and funding to continue on this good work and to

[1:20:39] Voice 4: refine the science and continue to engage in increasing water literacy and knowledge

[1:20:46] Voice 4: in the Islands Trust Area. A fundamental part of this is understanding Indigenous values

[1:20:53] Voice 4: and getting the true traditional knowledge download and finding ways that we can

[1:21:03] Voice 4: can have a commitment to multiple ways of knowing and ultimately using that knowledge

[1:21:17] Voice 4: to connect with planning and support research that goes beyond human needs and supports

[1:21:25] Voice 4: ecosystem needs, supporting rainwater use and greywater recycling and development of

[1:21:33] Voice 4: communication outreach programs and development of monitoring and reporting programs to increase

[1:21:39] Voice 4: our monitoring and on the island um we have partners in this the water sustainability act

[1:21:45] Voice 4: is a huge partner and the majority of this work will be used um by the province through water

[1:21:53] Voice 4: authorizations um there's tools under the water sustainability act that won't get into now

[1:21:58] Voice 4: that can help not only Islands Trust but Galeona Island specifically to engage water sustainability

[1:22:06] Voice 4: measures on the island. I cannot go without saying this that as of February 29th 2016 there we go I

[1:22:20] Voice 4: said that non-domestic groundwater use so this is farms commercial uses community water systems that

[1:22:27] Voice 4: use groundwater requires a license for authorization from the province and if you have a family farm

[1:22:34] Voice 4: and if or if you have a family business and you're using groundwater and as it sits if you don't

[1:22:42] Voice 4: license your groundwater well and apply for license right now or before march 2022 it's

[1:22:47] Voice 4: a potential you'll lose your groundwater right in the first in time first and right era so i say

[1:22:52] Voice 4: here register your water right that is a little bit um tongue-in-cheek because domestic water

[1:22:58] Voice 4: groundwater users do not need a water license however if your well is not registered your

[1:23:05] Voice 4: groundwater well won't be brought into the story when there is a application for a licensed

[1:23:12] Voice 4: groundwater use so if you have a non-domestic water well that you're using apply for a water

[1:23:21] Voice 4: license before march 22 2022 and if your well is not registered you're really encouraged to

[1:23:27] Voice 4: submit your welfare registry and um there's a variety of references that i can provide

[1:23:35] Voice 4: if people are more interested in that okay so finally um what are the tools and processes that

[1:23:43] Voice 4: that we can use at islands trust to implement some of this groundwater research and to ensure

[1:23:49] Voice 4: of sustainability so ultimately we're guided by the island stress object there's the policy

[1:23:55] Voice 4: statement that is the conversation between the object and the act coming down to official

[1:24:03] Voice 4: community plans land use bylaws community education coordination with our partners and

[1:24:08] Voice 4: science research and monitoring programs the policy statement is currently underway in engagement and

[1:24:15] Voice 4: And many islands, islanders and residents have already expressed their concern about

[1:24:20] Voice 4: freshwater as a top priority for the Island Trust moving forward.

[1:24:24] Voice 4: And freshwater sustainability will be supported by the Trust Policy Statement, although the

[1:24:29] Voice 4: details of that conversation are ongoing.

[1:24:33] Voice 4: There's a lot on this slide, but I just wanted to show that, and we can come back to this.

[1:24:38] Voice 4: So what's already existing policies in the official community plan for Galliano Island?

[1:24:44] Voice 4: There's the DPA for the elevated groundwater catchment areas, there is language about supporting rainwater catchment and greywater use, we can improve on these we can consider groundwater and temporary use permit guidelines, we can connect to the groundwater

[1:24:58] Voice 4: sustainability.

[1:25:00] Voice 4: Well yeah, of course we can do that, but we can read revise the development permanent areas. There's a lot of different options that can be considered by the local trust committee.

[1:25:10] Voice 4: In the land use bylaw there's rainwater capture requirements. There's exemption of cisterns from floor area, which is really encouraging.

[1:25:19] Voice 4: There's standards for potable water supply and we can improve on those. We can revisit proof of water for subdivision regulations.

[1:25:27] Voice 4: We can engage in rainwater harvesting, greywater regulations.

[1:25:31] Voice 4: We can review water management regulations and impermeable surfaces can create new groundwater protection zones.

[1:25:42] Voice 4: There's a lot of opportunities within the land use bylaw.

[1:25:47] Voice 4: And so I'm going to wrap up here. I just have a few more slides.

[1:25:50] Voice 4: One of the measures to protect groundwater in the official community plan is DPA for elevated groundwater catchment areas and and ultimately this came from some brief consulting work that was done on recharge areas and then ultimately this this DPA was made, and it's

[1:26:19] Voice 4: just by overlaying this on the groundwater recharge

[1:26:22] Voice 4: potential map that has just come out,

[1:26:25] Voice 4: you know, we can see that there's a lot of areas

[1:26:29] Voice 4: of significant groundwater recharge

[1:26:32] Voice 4: that isn't covered by the DPA.

[1:26:35] Voice 4: The majority of the island is a groundwater recharge zone.

[1:26:39] Voice 4: So there's a lot of questions that we can ask of,

[1:26:43] Voice 4: did DPA 4 work?

[1:26:45] Voice 4: how many applications were put forward in this dpa can it be rewritten can it be remapped

[1:26:53] Voice 4: and going forward and so one last thing about what's in the official community plan is the

[1:27:01] Voice 4: water management areas so i'm just lay this over the vulnerability mapping that we just did so we

[1:27:06] Voice 4: can see that in the north there's a groundwater management area that lines up quite well

[1:27:11] Voice 4: um and in the south uh same um and there's one here on on the bluffs here that is showing a

[1:27:18] Voice 4: groundwater management area in a sustaining zone and perhaps that's why it's sustaining because

[1:27:23] Voice 4: that groundwater management area worked um and so uh ultimately this is uh one of our best foot

[1:27:32] Voice 4: foot forward is to do public education so we can increase our water literacy by this is a brochure

[1:27:41] Voice 4: that we can put out that Island Trust has put out and so yeah the next steps are to engage the

[1:27:47] Voice 4: community on these groundwater science projects which is what we're trying to do right now through

[1:27:51] Voice 4: this information meeting analysis and reporting on options for bylaw amendments and consultations

[1:27:57] Voice 4: with our agencies and First Nation partners and community and then ultimately lead to

[1:28:03] Voice 4: recommendations for potential amendments and the legislative process to amend the bylaws and with

[1:28:08] Voice 4: that I will oh and I just want to leave you with this so this very beautiful illustration was done

[1:28:18] Voice 4: through with our knowledge traditional knowledge holders through the freshwater sustainability

[1:28:24] Voice 4: ability strategy and i want to really acknowledge um in our through that process that we had a

[1:28:30] Voice 4: strategic um advisory round table and uh janine jorgensen was part of of that who is a

[1:28:38] Voice 4: an islander from galliano and we're really grateful to have her wealth of knowledge and

[1:28:44] Voice 4: we are really um enriched um with with uh her presence and so with that i'll leave it to

[1:28:52] Voice 4: to Chair Rogers to kick off the question and answer.

[1:28:54] Voice 4: Thank you.

[1:28:58] Voice 10: Also, should I stop sharing screen probably?

[1:29:04] Voice 8: Probably maybe if people can shrink it

[1:29:09] Voice 8: because someone may ask you a question

[1:29:11] Voice 8: about a specific slide.

[1:29:15] Voice 8: Right.

[1:29:16] Voice 8: I just wonder, I don't know what we're gonna get.

[1:29:19] Voice 8: In any case, thank you for that, William.

[1:29:22] Voice 8: It was a very fulsome presentation.

[1:29:27] Voice 8: And so we're now, we do have a bit of time

[1:29:31] Voice 8: for questions and answers.

[1:29:33] Voice 8: This is obviously not the last time this will come before us.

[1:29:36] Voice 8: And I just want to say a couple of things, please.

[1:29:40] Voice 8: This is not a time to ask questions.

[1:29:42] Voice 8: This is our project.

[1:29:43] Voice 8: This is not about any particular application.

[1:29:46] Voice 8: It's also not about anything that's going on

[1:29:49] Voice 8: at the Trust Council, like the Trust Policy Statement.

[1:29:55] Voice 8: It's about this particular project, this particular-

[1:30:00] Voice 8: that we've just received and we have available William,

[1:30:06] Voice 8: of course, and we have the Island Planner

[1:30:11] Voice 8: who could try and snag some questions,

[1:30:14] Voice 8: although it will be a Planner Chadwick who is,

[1:30:18] Voice 8: because this is considered to be a regional planning team

[1:30:22] Voice 8: project and so Nerissa is assigned to it

[1:30:25] Voice 8: and she just simply can't be here.

[1:30:27] Voice 8: please be brief and courteous and of course respectful with your questions and again please

[1:30:38] Voice 8: not about specific applications I see someone whose moniker is two peeps I don't know who that

[1:30:45] Voice 8: is probably some people on the island know who that is but if you could make two peeps available

[1:30:52] Voice 8: available to speak. So you will have been promoted. You can unmute yourself and you can turn your

[1:31:01] Voice 8: camera on if you wish, two peeps.

[1:31:03] Voice 5: Mute and start video. Start video. I don't want to waste anybody's

[1:31:10] Voice 5: time. Hi, I'm one of two peeps who lives here. My name is Ian and I just have a very quick question

[1:31:17] Voice 5: about the the science right in the beginning William you were talking about uh the increased

[1:31:23] Voice 5: pressure from rainfall and then as the that pressure is what's the word used up um and then

[1:31:34] Voice 5: you get the pressure coming in from the outside from the ocean you get the problem of a saltwater

[1:31:39] Voice 5: intrusion. And my question is, once the salt has worked its way in, in subsequent years, does

[1:31:47] Voice 5: freshwater drive that salt back out of the ground? Or once it's, if you want to call it contaminated

[1:31:57] Voice 5: or whatever, once the salt is there, does it remain in what I presume is usually the coastal

[1:32:05] Voice 5: coastal areas?

[1:32:07] Voice 4: That's a great question. Thank you so much. So it can be both. And so there has been

[1:32:16] Voice 4: identification of saltwater intrusion in the coastal areas. And we have some case studies where

[1:32:23] Voice 4: it did freshen up over time. And there's also other areas where the aquifer is just not getting

[1:32:33] Voice 4: the chance to freshen up because what can happen is that um the the that region if it's if there's

[1:32:42] Voice 4: a many wells that are that are densely populated there that one well can experience a saltwater

[1:32:49] Voice 4: intrusion but the other wells aren't so the well once you get saltwater intrusion you're you're

[1:32:56] Voice 4: like asked through regulation to stop use but if the other wells aren't then they can keep using

[1:33:02] Voice 4: but they could be also contributing to the lower pressures in that area and so that mitigation

[1:33:09] Voice 4: measure of just turning off one well may not work another factor is that when the salt water comes

[1:33:16] Voice 4: in like there's this main fracture I'm showing here but there could be multiple smaller fractures

[1:33:22] Voice 4: and that salt water can go pack into those small fractures and just slowly then bleed out into the

[1:33:29] Voice 4: the main fracture over several years decades forever um and you know i i encourage you to

[1:33:37] Voice 4: take a fresh glass of your groundwater and then go to the ocean and just grab like a little

[1:33:44] Voice 4: half shot glass of salt water and put in a few drops and you can see how little amount of

[1:33:53] Voice 4: of ocean water will make a whole entire glass of fresh water taste salty so it it doesn't have to

[1:34:01] Voice 4: be a lot of volume in order for it to be a persistent pest after saltwater intrusion occurs

[1:34:07] Voice 4: but but there has been um has been cases where it it did get better so

[1:34:13] Voice 5: it's really important we take

[1:34:14] Voice 5: care of this now while we're talking about it

[1:34:17] Voice 4: yeah so so the data logger that i was talking

[1:34:20] Voice 4: talking about that looks at electronic connectivity which is a precursor well it's a not a precursor

[1:34:27] Voice 4: it's a I don't know what the word is right now but but essentially it's it's a it determines

[1:34:35] Voice 4: the salinity of of water and so if we're monitoring electronic connectivity across the island we can

[1:34:42] Voice 4: then see pre-warning signs of salt water intrusion if it's occurring but then also

[1:34:50] Voice 4: yeah yeah yeah

[1:34:51] Voice 4: Yeah, thank you.

[1:34:51] Voice 5: Yeah, thank you very, very much.

[1:34:52] Voice 5: I know there must be other people wanting to ask questions,

[1:34:55] Voice 5: so I'll get out of the way, but thanks a lot for that.

[1:34:58] Voice 5: And thank you all of you for making this possible.

[1:35:01] Voice 8: Yeah, thanks.

[1:35:03] Voice 8: Trustee Wolverton, did you have something you wish to say?

[1:35:06] Voice 8: Your hands up.

[1:35:10] Voice 11: Just quickly that we currently have two observation wells

[1:35:14] Voice 11: on Galliano, one on Shopland and one at the school.

[1:35:17] Voice 11: The one on Shopland was the one that William spoke about,

[1:35:21] Voice 11: and we will be adding a third one this later this month at the community hall so we'll be able to

[1:35:28] Voice 11: have uh data from that area as well okay

[1:35:32] Voice 8: thanks uh

[1:35:34] Voice 10: the next person i saw uh you muted yourself chair

[1:35:42] Voice 10: yeah sheila anderson please okay you're here sheila if you could unmute yourself

[1:36:02] Voice 10: off there you go

[1:36:07] Voice 1: hello um my husband's got to get hold of the dog um can you hear me

[1:36:15] Voice 8: we can Sheila

[1:36:16] Voice 8: okay my

[1:36:19] Voice 1: question my question is really in relation to the data and if I'm understanding correctly

[1:36:29] Voice 1: this has not incorporated data from any dug wells which aren't normally required to be

[1:36:39] Voice 1: you know registered at time of building and and yet you can't build a house without a potable

[1:36:48] Voice 1: water supply so it should be assumed that every house in any region has a well and if there isn't

[1:36:56] Voice 1: a drilled well registered would you not assume that there's a dug well

[1:37:05] Voice 4: okay yeah thank you for

[1:37:08] Voice 4: the question. So just for a point of clarity, as of 2016, dug wells are required to be registered.

[1:37:18] Voice 4: But you're right, historically they haven't been, and I haven't really seen many being registered

[1:37:24] Voice 4: in the last while. We actually did this project, the question you're posing, if there is a,

[1:37:32] Voice 4: from BC assessment data we can tell if there if there's a parcel that's vacant or not

[1:37:38] Voice 4: if it has you know assessed value that shows that it's not vacant and and compare that to

[1:37:47] Voice 4: areas that are parcels that have water wells or parcels that are in a community water system

[1:37:54] Voice 4: and we did find several that are not showing that they have registered wells and and so there

[1:38:03] Voice 4: were some targeted approaches from the province to reach out to those people and to reach out to

[1:38:08] Voice 4: potential drillers who drilled in that area so that's part of the data so if there was dug wells

[1:38:15] Voice 4: it was part of understanding the aquifers through the conceptualization which I

[1:38:23] Voice 4: I didn't show that we do have some areas of the island modeled using looking at this shallow groundwater.

[1:38:34] Voice 4: But but ultimately, I think that shallow dug wells are an underused resource.

[1:38:40] Voice 4: And in some areas, they're prolific for the more rocky bedrock type of islands in the southern Gulf Islands.

[1:38:46] Voice 4: that's not as rich of a resource where say on Denman Island where there's the Quadra Sands

[1:38:52] Voice 4: aquifer that's on the surface has a lot of water in that in that aquifer and it's actually mapped

[1:38:59] Voice 4: as an aquifer and so there are certain areas of Salt Spring Island that have mapped aquifers that

[1:39:06] Voice 4: um that are um uh that do uh sorry that do have um dug wells in them and um but for the most part

[1:39:17] Voice 4: um there's not a lot of shallow dug well regions that were identified um on galliano yeah you're

[1:39:25] Voice 4: right yeah

[1:39:26] Voice 1: could could i just add then that i'll just say that in the neighborhood i live in um

[1:39:35] Voice 1: all of our neighbors that are sort of on the same elevation that we are, as far as I know,

[1:39:42] Voice 1: they all have dug wells. And we've all been here for many years. And the wells generally are really

[1:39:50] Voice 1: good. Ours is a spring fed dug well. And the aquifer here in this region is very near the

[1:39:57] Voice 1: surface, which I understand also makes it somewhat vulnerable to overdevelopment and pollution.

[1:40:05] Voice 1: but um it's clearly got a good supply but like our well is not registered it was done in the 1980s

[1:40:15] Voice 1: and it's stood up well for us for all these years and my neighbors on either side

[1:40:22] Voice 1: are have similar situations so i think there's a gap in in like i noticed our area was colored

[1:40:30] Voice 1: in such a way to make it look like there's no problem here but um and that's great except i'm

[1:40:38] Voice 1: not sure all the data has been made available to you so i would hope some encouragement and

[1:40:45] Voice 1: and highlighting this to people like us who have been here for a long time have not been told that

[1:40:52] Voice 1: we need to go and register our wells and and and why we need to and um you've touched on it in your

[1:41:01] Voice 1: talk and and that's good info but how i hope there is an effort to reach out to people like us who

[1:41:07] Voice 1: um you know just didn't know yeah

[1:41:12] Voice 4: and and and i i yeah i agree yeah no thank you for that and i

[1:41:16] Voice 4: I agree that there's some areas that have prolific shallow dug wells, like around the

[1:41:22] Voice 4: Black Creek area, and it's a data desert or black hole, if you will.

[1:41:28] Voice 4: So I believe that we have reached all the data that's available to us, but there is,

[1:41:39] Voice 4: I was saying that stories and lived experience and consultation with communities enriches that

[1:41:48] Voice 4: quantitative data that we have available to us from the province or from other types of mapping

[1:41:55] Voice 4: agents. We didn't do any on-island data collection. I 100% agree with you with the

[1:42:05] Voice 4: shallow dug wells that it is a resource that's um that's understudied and underutilized and um

[1:42:13] Voice 4: and and had like there has been prolific shallow groundwater that's been used for decades and

[1:42:20] Voice 4: and you're right it's a vulnerable resource and it's um more susceptible to climate and to

[1:42:26] Voice 4: contamination and and hey

[1:42:28] Voice 8: william i want

[1:42:28] Voice 4: to move on to the next question if i can okay thanks yeah

[1:42:31] Voice 8: Yeah, sure. Thanks. Great. Great. The next person up was Michelle Tothill.

[1:42:35] Voice 10: Thanks,

[1:42:38] Voice 8: Sheila. If you want to mute yourself and we can move Sheila back and Michelle Tothill.

[1:42:46] Voice 8: There you go. OK.

[1:42:50] Voice 9: My question was along the same lines.

[1:42:52] Voice 9: How do I find out if our well is registered? It's 70 plus years old and dad doesn't have the capacity to let my brother and I know if it is.

[1:43:03] Voice 9: um and if it isn't how or how do i just register it

[1:43:07] Voice 4: um so um i am still sharing my screen so

[1:43:15] Voice 4: there's this um mapping agent called if you just go into google and type g wells it's the groundwater

[1:43:20] Voice 4: wells um and aquifers mapping

[1:43:24] Voice 3: and

[1:43:25] Voice 4: and you can zoom in it's kind of weird you have to hold down

[1:43:28] Voice 4: control and zoom or use the arrows but you can like zoom into your location on the island wherever

[1:43:34] Voice 4: you are and you can see if your well's registered oh

[1:43:37] Voice 9: well just scoot over to the

[1:43:38] Voice 9: Cayman Peninsula and I'll take a peek maybe

[1:43:43] Voice 4: we could do that maybe maybe do that offline

[1:43:46] Voice 4: but um yeah

[1:43:47] Voice 4: and

[1:43:48] Voice 9: Doug Wells came up and I realize I'm asking similar questions to what Sheila did

[1:43:53] Voice 9: we don't have a Doug well but we have a Doug pond that we use for we used to use for watering the

[1:44:00] Voice 9: the garden um so it was now it's never been used as a source of drinking water um do they need to

[1:44:08] Voice 9: be because i don't think something like that would need to be registered but is there also a record

[1:44:13] Voice 9: of the freshwater springs on the islands because we have one of those too that we don't draw water

[1:44:19] Voice 9: from

[1:44:19] Voice 4: yeah we're trying to we're trying to get there with um the freshwater atlas um so we we've

[1:44:26] Voice 4: been compiling a lot of data looking at um uh like there's a few maps from from the province

[1:44:34] Voice 4: that looked at some wetlands but but it's few and far in between so that's why using the the um

[1:44:42] Voice 4: satellite data is exciting but also there's the conservancy that knows way more about that stuff

[1:44:47] Voice 4: than i do and really hoping to to start working with the on island conservancy groups so we can

[1:44:53] Voice 4: and start identifying where wetlands and ponds are.

[1:44:57] Voice 4: So one last thing about ponds,

[1:44:58] Voice 4: if ponds are used for irrigation,

[1:45:00] Voice 4: that's more than a hectare, I believe it's a hectare.

[1:45:03] Voice 4: And if it's attached to,

[1:45:05] Voice 4: if it's just a dug pond and just collects rainwater,

[1:45:07] Voice 4: then it's not a vested interest with the province.

[1:45:10] Voice 4: But if it's like a large pond that's interacting

[1:45:14] Voice 4: with either a spring or with shallow groundwater,

[1:45:18] Voice 4: then if it's used for non-domestic uses,

[1:45:20] Voice 4: it needs to be licensed.

[1:45:21] Voice 4: are licensed yeah

[1:45:23] Voice 9: okay um thanks the garden isn't hector thank you very much thank

[1:45:27] Voice 8: you um and yes

[1:45:31] Voice 8: trustee wolverton you had something yeah

[1:45:33] Voice 11: just to say that in the on the domestic the form for the

[1:45:37] Voice 11: domestic well registration uh it allows you to uh register either a drilled or a dug well okay

[1:45:46] Voice 8: Okay, thanks.

[1:45:48] Voice 10: The next person is Suzanne Forney. You should be

[1:46:01] Voice 8: able to unmute yourself now, Suzanne.

[1:46:03] Voice 2: Hi, can you hear me?

[1:46:04] Voice 8: We can.

[1:46:05] Voice 2: Okay, I had a couple of questions for William Shelba. Thank you very much. That was really interesting.

[1:46:13] Voice 2: My first question is, we're at the north end of Galliano, and it was hard to make out with that map without any geographic markers on it.

[1:46:23] Voice 2: I understand that would have been pretty tricky for a simple graphic but I was wondering if your

[1:46:29] Voice 2: data from the north end came from the Spanish Hills Water District because that would be about

[1:46:36] Voice 2: the only body up here that would that would monitor or take note of how much water is used

[1:46:42] Voice 2: everything else is a drilled well as part of a subdivision many many years ago.

[1:46:50] Voice 4: Yeah great thanks

[1:46:51] Voice 4: Thanks for that question. So, just so happens that that was my one example. So yeah, the water supply system does come from that, that water use does come from that.

[1:47:03] Voice 4: Matt, all the other domestic use that you see here on this demand side comes from the registered wells and the assumption for a domestic well is we kind of split the difference between the low and the high and we chose 600 liters per day, which is a not so conservative conservative would be like 2000 liters per day.

[1:47:29] Voice 4: so that's where that data came from and as you know as you know that area is in water management

[1:47:36] Voice 4: area and also it shows high vulnerability and that's because of the the the real high amount

[1:47:44] Voice 4: of runoff in the winter and and the moderate recharge yeah and so and also there's a lot

[1:47:53] Voice 4: amount a lot of irrigation that has been assigned to that area so this is where it would be great to

[1:48:01] Voice 4: like have a conversation with people who live in that neighborhood and and actually then zoom into

[1:48:06] Voice 4: these parcels say is this irrigation actually happening um but yeah that's to answer your

[1:48:11] Voice 4: question that's where the water supply stuff came from and i'm not sure if that's reported or if it

[1:48:17] Voice 4: was um assumed i'll have to look into the data yeah i

[1:48:22] Voice 2: i assume it was um it was collected and

[1:48:25] Voice 2: gathered and known only to the spanish hills water district um which is quite an intense use of water

[1:48:32] Voice 2: it's um you know many homes are on one or two wells so whereas where we are which is on the

[1:48:40] Voice 2: the ridge above, everybody has a drilled well, and the uses are quite separate. But anyway,

[1:48:47] Voice 2: that part was interesting. And I have another question. I saw a previous presentation by you

[1:48:53] Voice 2: in person at the South Hall, and you showed how compost piles, outhouses, and sewer systems could

[1:49:02] Voice 2: impact a well. And I think you put in some colored dyes, because it was really interesting

[1:49:08] Voice 2: how like outhouses which have been illegal since 2007 can contaminate um a freshwater creek they

[1:49:18] Voice 2: can contaminate people's wells like is there any hard and fast rule about distance or the depth of

[1:49:25] Voice 2: the well um like how can you determine those things uh objectively um

[1:49:32] Voice 4: yeah um so there there

[1:49:36] Voice 4: There is, like, hard and fast rules on distances, and I showed that here with well location.

[1:49:42] Voice 4: So this is part of the groundwater protection regulation, right?

[1:49:44] Voice 4: So this is province-wide, so this is the best guess.

[1:49:49] Voice 4: And with, like, thicker soils, these systems have less impact.

[1:49:56] Voice 4: But with thinner soils and bedrock-dominated, we're noticing, like, say, on Hornby Island,

[1:50:00] Voice 4: and that there are issues with coliforms and E. coli in groundwater wells.

[1:50:09] Voice 4: So, yeah, I mean, it's really site-specific,

[1:50:13] Voice 4: and this is just basic planning setbacks for that.

[1:50:19] Voice 4: But, yeah, through that working model,

[1:50:21] Voice 4: it was really interesting to see on how far some of those contaminants can travel.

[1:50:26] Voice 4: And yeah, like with one lot, like a well per lot

[1:50:31] Voice 4: and a septic field per lot and in tight areas,

[1:50:35] Voice 4: it's one of the biggest issues that we have, yeah.

[1:50:39] Voice 8: Thanks.

[1:50:41] Voice 8: I'm just

[1:50:42] Voice 8: saying, I've got a couple other questions

[1:50:44] Voice 8: and we're running out of time, so.

[1:50:46] Voice 2: Nope, go ahead.

[1:50:46] Voice 2: Thank you very much.

[1:50:47] Voice 8: Thank you.

[1:50:48] Voice 8: I have two more hands, so even though it's seven,

[1:50:52] Voice 8: we'll see if we can finish these two questions.

[1:50:54] Voice 8: Jennifer Margerson.

[1:51:00] Voice 10: Go ahead. Yeah,

[1:51:11] Voice 8: we can hear you.

[1:51:12] Voice 6: Thank you so much, William. This has really been such an interesting presentation.

[1:51:16] Voice 6: Many of us on Galliano live in areas that are approved for build out that has not yet happened.

[1:51:23] Voice 6: And I just want you haven't really commented on that in your presentation specifically.

[1:51:29] Voice 6: But I just wondered in terms of one of the directives under freshwater resources in the current trust policy statement, it does refer to existing anticipated and seasonal demands for water being considered and allowed for in terms of further development approval.

[1:51:50] Voice 6: And I just wondered if you could speak to that that how important is it for residents and trustees to have a really clear picture of the already approved for a build out when considering additional densities and is that something you can address through your project through maps or tools to help us all have a clear picture of anticipated demand.

[1:52:12] Voice 6: Yeah,

[1:52:15] Voice 4: thanks, Jennifer. That's a great question. So through this process, we have mapped out the build-out potential for the islands in the southern Gulf Islands.

[1:52:30] Voice 4: And so what these regions are showing is this current use with the current density.

[1:52:37] Voice 4: and um there can be more analysis looking at potential build out in areas and so the build

[1:52:46] Voice 4: maps exist not publicly i don't think but um perhaps planner smith can speak to that but

[1:52:56] Voice 4: um yeah the the the water balance can be run for a build out case and it can also be run

[1:53:05] Voice 4: for a climate case so like the like the the most amount of water use so like looking at 2050

[1:53:15] Voice 4: if everything's built out and climate's doing what it's doing what's the water balance at that time

[1:53:21] Voice 4: um an interesting thing about that is that it build out and and increase water use could also

[1:53:31] Voice 4: be balanced by by conservation as well so there's there's that perspective as

[1:53:41] Voice 4: well I'm just looking for my balance slide but yeah so it's something that we

[1:53:47] Voice 4: have been thinking about and and we do have some of the data to to then move

[1:53:51] Voice 4: forward and perhaps run the water balance again to address that is that

[1:53:58] Voice 6: that something that will likely be available soon or just anticipated down the road?

[1:54:05] Voice 4: It would have to be related to the implementation project. So if there is a particular,

[1:54:15] Voice 4: like say, planning method that we're going to look at, like say, if the LTC wants to address

[1:54:23] Voice 4: us zoning then that would be a really great time to undertake that work okay

[1:54:32] Voice 10: thank you

[1:54:33] Voice 10: we

[1:54:34] Voice 8: think we've got time for one more quick question from carmita do you hear

[1:54:54] Voice 7: me you

[1:54:55] Voice 8: do okay

[1:54:56] Voice 7: thank you mr shulva i just want to ask you that how do you consider a community well

[1:55:06] Voice 7: instead of just one property well when you do the calculations?

[1:55:15] Voice 4: Sure yeah okay so we we know where the community wells are because they're either registered

[1:55:23] Voice 4: or sorry they're either licensed or if they're not licensed then they will have a note

[1:55:31] Voice 4: in the well registry that they're a community water supply so there's a few ways that we

[1:55:37] Voice 4: address the community water supply so one was actually having the data so for the crd

[1:55:44] Voice 4: community that are managed by the crd there's annual reporting and so that data can be used

[1:55:53] Voice 4: island health has some data there's no water utility so we don't have water utility data on

[1:55:58] Voice 4: in Galliano. But then for the water, community water systems that don't have raw data,

[1:56:07] Voice 4: we tried to determine the connections to that well, either by asking that community water

[1:56:15] Voice 4: system or just trying to map it, and then assigning a water use per connection

[1:56:23] Voice 4: using historical data from the Southern Gulf Islands.

[1:56:27] Voice 4: Yeah, so the community water system wells

[1:56:31] Voice 4: weren't just assigned the 600 liters per day.

[1:56:35] Voice 4: They're either assigned their license limit,

[1:56:38] Voice 4: which was really important to have,

[1:56:41] Voice 4: and we'll have more of that data going forward.

[1:56:43] Voice 4: So this is just the first step.

[1:56:45] Voice 4: Once licensing really starts coming online,

[1:56:47] Voice 4: we're gonna get a lot more water use data from that.

[1:56:51] Voice 4: thank

[1:56:51] Voice 7: you thank you very much yeah

[1:56:53] Voice 8: thank you and thank you carmita and thank you for all of your

[1:56:57] Voice 8: questions um

[1:56:57] Voice 7: uh

[1:56:58] Voice 8: we're um a few minutes over we're about the same amount of overtime as we were

[1:57:04] Voice 8: getting late getting started uh thank i just want to give either do either of the trustees wish to

[1:57:10] Voice 8: say anything before uh we close this session be um uh no pressure um but i don't see anybody

[1:57:18] Voice 8: unmuting so we'll

[1:57:19] Voice 8: just let it go i

[1:57:20] Voice 9: was gonna ask if you wanted to address the two questions in the

[1:57:24] Voice 9: chat oh

[1:57:25] Voice 8: oh thank you very much i forgot about that yes i did see it and i was gonna come back

[1:57:30] Voice 8: there are two questions can you see them william uh yeah one of them is is galliano truly a one

[1:57:39] Voice 8: aquifer i

[1:57:41] Voice 4: love this question um it's not the first time i've gotten it a long one it's well

[1:57:47] Voice 4: Well, it's a very short one.

[1:57:50] Voice 4: The province has only mapped it as one aquifer.

[1:57:53] Voice 4: There are geological units

[1:57:55] Voice 4: that are stacked on top of each other

[1:57:57] Voice 4: that could potentially be separated out as two aquifers,

[1:58:01] Voice 4: but the way that recharge and the groundwater works,

[1:58:05] Voice 4: it's really one unit according to the definition.

[1:58:11] Voice 2: Zeb hasn't

[1:58:11] Voice 2: left yet, has he?

[1:58:13] Voice 4: Oh, I think,

[1:58:14] Voice 8: Dion, can you unmute?

[1:58:15] Voice 8: Somebody's still unmuted.

[1:58:16] Voice 8: it's actually suzanne the queen suzanne fournier back to the attendees please she's still in the

[1:58:22] Voice 8: uh through no fall of her own she's still in her thank you thanks

[1:58:27] Voice 4: great um so that's really like

[1:58:30] Voice 4: the the like we can revisit aqua mapping and we have done so on on denman and hornby and on salt

[1:58:35] Voice 4: spring just because we're looking more at the shallow unconsolidated aquifers but the big

[1:58:40] Voice 4: bedrock aquifer it's largely just that gabriola formation with a little bit of other conglomerate

[1:58:46] Voice 4: sprinkled in there that just they kind of are they they hydraulically work together um but but like

[1:58:53] Voice 4: we were discussing those shallow the shallow dug wells um those areas are their own aquifer

[1:59:00] Voice 4: um it's an aquifer sitting on top of an aquifer so the shallow dug wells um that can be a an aquifer

[1:59:07] Voice 4: mapping project um that would be very valuable yeah and and but but ultimately to understand

[1:59:13] Voice 4: the water balance the groundwater regions is really the the the strong uh unit of of inquiry

[1:59:20] Voice 4: yeah and and and just one last thing because i did flash the 3d model in there um that's a fun

[1:59:27] Voice 4: one to go explore and just slice the island in half and check it out and and it's a it's a new

[1:59:32] Voice 4: view and a new way of mapping um because these are 3d spaces under the ground they're not just

[1:59:41] Voice 4: polygons on a map.

[1:59:42] Voice 8: Great.

[1:59:43] Voice 8: And then there was a quick question

[1:59:44] Voice 8: before I come to you,

[1:59:45] Voice 8: Trustee Wolverton,

[1:59:46] Voice 8: whether it's possible

[1:59:47] Voice 8: to buy the monitor equipment

[1:59:48] Voice 8: for their own well.

[1:59:49] Voice 8: I assume that's a yes,

[1:59:51] Voice 8: but I...

[1:59:53] Voice 4: So yes and no.

[1:59:54] Voice 4: You can obviously,

[1:59:55] Voice 4: you can buy whatever you want.

[1:59:57] Voice 4: And...

[2:00:00] Voice 4: the the the equipment is is is easily accessible um there's several outfits that sell it in vancouver

[2:00:09] Voice 4: um however uh to open up a groundwater well and to install anything in the groundwater well you need

[2:00:17] Voice 4: a professional uh well installer or a sorry professional pump installer or professional

[2:00:23] Voice 4: driller or a professional hydrogeologist.

[2:00:26] Voice 8: Great, thank you. I hope that answers your

[2:00:29] Voice 8: question, Kim. Thanks for those questions. Trustee Wolverton?

[2:00:33] Voice 11: Yes, there was a mention of

[2:00:34] Voice 11: William. By the way, thank you for the whole presentation. The question about build-out,

[2:00:41] Voice 11: and so I understand that there might be some more information available. I know they've been doing

[2:00:49] Voice 11: some on on gabriola but i wasn't aware that the rest of the islands had that information so that

[2:00:56] Voice 4: that would yeah so that was just a discovery mapping project that we uh looked at i think

[2:01:03] Voice 4: we started just looking at north pender and i believe we worked on galliano just to see if it

[2:01:10] Voice 4: would if if there was enough information and i know that there's been some talk about wanting

[2:01:16] Voice 4: wanting it on salt spring as well so i i'm not saying it's available and uh but it's something

[2:01:23] Voice 4: that we did discuss and and i did some preliminary um work on the north pender one just to see

[2:01:29] Voice 4: how much build out there is and is this significant and in some areas it's like overly significant and

[2:01:37] Voice 4: obviously that zoning will just not be realized like there's some bad old zoning in places um i

[2:01:43] Voice 4: I don't think that's the case for Galliano.

[2:01:46] Voice 4: I think the majority of the density would come from rezoning,

[2:01:49] Voice 4: which is a discretionary process from the LTC.

[2:01:51] Voice 4: So all of the water resource work would have to come during that time, right?

[2:02:00] Voice 8: Okay, thanks.

[2:02:01] Voice 8: Yes, and just to be clear, there's that work,

[2:02:04] Voice 8: and then there's what's called a formal build-out map,

[2:02:07] Voice 8: which has been done on Gabriel as a specific project that was,

[2:02:11] Voice 8: and we've heard from people that you know that it's a an intensive amount of work so um as

[2:02:20] Voice 8: opposed to what we're talking about here um so just be clear about that okay so thank you very

[2:02:25] Voice 8: much anything anything else uh from anyone uh finer smith the trustees nothing if not then i'll

[2:02:32] Voice 8: say thank you very much for the for all of your attendance um we had almost i think we have pretty

[2:02:39] Voice 8: close to 50 people throughout your presentation uh some have left from the q a uh that's a great

[2:02:46] Voice 8: turnout uh on a on a wednesday night and before the before labor day and uh we'll see you all

[2:02:55] Voice 8: we don't a reminder that we have our regular uh local trust committee meeting on uh tuesday

[2:03:01] Voice 8: this week week it's a tuesday not a monday uh at 12 30. uh we'll be on zoom again it's all on the

[2:03:09] Voice 8: website. The package is posted now. This presentation is also posted on the website

[2:03:17] Voice 8: attached to the meeting, today's meeting, and probably also will be if it hasn't already been

[2:03:25] Voice 8: be put in the project section. It may be there already. Just one thing I've discovered because

[2:03:34] Voice 8: because someone was asking me this.

[2:03:36] Voice 8: The recording will be up shortly.

[2:03:38] Voice 8: It's posted at present as a recording

[2:03:44] Voice 8: related to this actual meeting.

[2:03:46] Voice 8: If you go back to the calendar when this meeting occurred,

[2:03:49] Voice 8: that's where the recording is posted now,

[2:03:52] Voice 8: as opposed to under the particular project.

[2:03:55] Voice 8: So that's where you would look for the recording

[2:03:57] Voice 8: if you know someone who wants to see this.

[2:04:00] Voice 8: Thanks for everybody's attention.

[2:04:02] Voice 8: I think that's it.

[2:04:03] Voice 8: we'll say good night now and we'll see you on Tuesday, many of you. Thanks very much.

[2:04:08] Voice 8: Thank you, Trustee Rogers.

[2:04:11] Voice 8: Thank you, Dionne.

[2:04:12] Voice 8: Thank you, William. Great, everyone. Have a good night.

[2:04:14] Voice 8: Yeah, thanks, Carly. And good night, everyone. We'll close the webinar now.