Editor:
Am I alone in being heartily sick of the religious fervour attached to anything to do with Chapman Creek? While there is a rich history here on the Coast of considering the forest to be magical, complete with fairies, compounded with pseudo science, the reality is that the watershed would work just as well if it were composed of wheat fields. We seem to forget that Gibsons draws water from its aquifer, which is situated under the town itself! The local forests are all second, third and in some areas fourth growth and are basically farms. And it might be of interest to note that the UK, with twice the population of Canada, a land mass similar to Vancouver Island and almost no forests, seems to manage its water supply issues without people chaining themselves to trees all the time.
As for this fear that seems to be out there that there is a water shortage, there isn’t. We have a distribution problem with not enough money saved up to create a larger network of pipelines and storage facilities. I doubt that there is a single lot on the Coast that would not produce great water if you drilled a well. I’m not saying that we should go back to raping the land, but let’s keep things a bit more in perspective.
Chester Machniewski, P.Eng, Gibsons
