While residents struggle to meet Stage 4 water restrictions, the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) is devising an emergency plan to access a plentiful water source in Chapman Lake.
Currently the SCRD has the licence and infrastructure to draw down the lake only three metres, but general manager of infrastructure services Bryan Shoji said there are another 32 metres that could be tapped.
“We’ve got a lot of water – it’s just we don’t have access to it,” Shoji said.
The comprehensive regional water plan created in 2013 called for accessing more water from the lake to meet high demand in the summer months, but when the idea was brought to council last year, a decision was deferred until 2016.
“George Smith from the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club and Jason Herz from the Sunshine Coast Conservation Association came and spoke to the board about their concerns, and that’s when we were instructed to defer moving forward with that until next year so we could review the environmental consequences further,” Shoji said.
The issue came to a head with this year’s drought-like conditions that led to the SCRD enacting Stage 4 water restrictions – banning all outdoor water use – for only the second time in Sunshine Coast history (the first was in 2012).
SCRD board chair Garry Nohr said the board had hoped that the water restrictions would enable the SCRD to conserve most of the accessible water in Chapman Lake, but Coasters seem unable to meet the new water use target of 10,000 litres a day, which is the same amount used in the wintertime.
While some are calling the issue a crisis, Nohr said he wouldn’t use that term
“because there’s something we can do about it.”
“The plan is that shortly they will be going up to Chapman Lake with three pipes, which they will then use to siphon water over the dam and down into the creek,” Nohr said.
Water is released from the lake into the creek to beef up the water flow, which is then recaptured about 14 km downstream by the SCRD water treatment plant.
The plan to siphon off three more metres of water from the lake requires First Nation and environmental approvals to move forward, and Nohr said the SCRD was just waiting this week on the approval from the Ministry of Environment.
Once approved, SCRD staff will get to work on the emergency siphon system and prepare a report on the action for the board, which reconvenes on Sept. 3 with an infrastructure services meeting.
“I suspect that meeting will be packed,” Nohr said.
Once the board reviews the report, a long-term solution will need to be found.
When asked why the board didn’t choose a long-term solution sooner, Nohr said: “That’s a good question, and being one who voted to do it at the time, I can’t explain the answer of the other board members.”
When told that many on social media are chastising the board for not coming up with a solution sooner, he said: “I can’t disagree. Hopefully it will get done this time around.”
To help inform the discussion when the issue comes back to the SCRD, the District of Sechelt has set up an E-Town Hall Meeting on water conservation planning on Tuesday, Aug. 25 at 7 p.m. in the community meeting room.
Residents can come to the District and give their input that day or send their feedback in via a form at www.sechelt.ca.
In a further effort to protect sports fields while Stage 4 watering restrictions remain in effect, the SCRD has closed all sports fields south of Pender Harbour to user groups until further notice.
The SCRD has also announced that it will not install ice at the Sunshine Coast Arena in Sechelt until Stage 4 is lifted.
