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Viewpoint: New water ideas needed

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Viewpoint: New water ideas needed

By PETER VINCENT

Last week’s draconian, finger-wagging proclamation by North Salt Spring Waterworks District trustee Chris Dixon in response to this newspaper’s kid-gloved reproach in its Feb. 6 editorial is little more than self congratulatory back slapping and school yard bullying.

Once again, the NSSWD has turned down another meritorious water hookup application. We should just sweep this board away and start fresh.

As the Driftwood wrote, the application put forward by the owners of the Creekhouse property (to build a suite for an in-house security person) was sound. Many downtown business owners have been the victim of thefts and vandalism (my gym, twice). The downtown core becomes a veritable free-for-all after the sun goes down. A security person in the area would do wonders.

The building owners committed to installing water-saving fixtures throughout the building, which would have resulted in a net savings of water consumption, which would seem like the whole raison d’être for a water board concerned about the diminishing levels of water. They can spin it any way they want (and if you read the article, incredibly, they do), but anything resulting in a net reduction is a good thing. Not so, apparently.

Their stance is “no exceptions, no how.” How ham fisted is that?! Most civilized government agencies and boards have a mechanism for exceptions — it is called a board of variance. Most civilized agencies have this mechanism to look at cases that may be worthy of exception. The brightest of the bright green, the “Agricultural Land Commission,” which is mandated to stop the erosion of farmland by development — even that rabidly “preserve and protect” provincial organization has a board that will look at applications even handedly. They will trade tracts of land for other tracts, if deemed useful.

Not so the NSSWD. If legally possible, they quite proudly drown any and all applications, and have the temerity to tell us all what a wonderful job they are doing by standing firm.

Years have been wasted on feeble fixes such as installing aerators in St. Mary Lake that are no longer used. The latest of these is the board’s misguided moratorium. This last affront to common sense with the Creekhouse application being kicked to the curb should be a wake-up call. One would hope that if islanders cry loud enough and long enough, the board may take another look. But that may be asking too much.

In my opinion, it’s time to change course. It’s time to encourage folks to get off the water grid. Salt Spring is famous for its forward, “out of the box” thinking. The NSSWD might want to consider giving district water users incentives such as low-cost loans or tax relief or outright grants to get off the water grid through installing a water catchment system or drilling a well.

And yet here we are, the tail wagging the dog, listening to the same tired old rhetoric with the same old failed “solutions” from the same old entrenched board.

Time for some fresh blood and new ideas.

The writer is a Salt Spring property and business owner.

Editorial: Windstorm sharing session

Driftwood Staff
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Editorial: Windstorm sharing session

Even though the devastating windstorm day is now two months in the past, people on Salt Spring Island are still talking about it, and for good reason.

As a report from a debrief session of the Salt Spring Island Emergency Program neighbourhood POD leaders articulates, the Dec. 20 windstorm and its aftermath was frightening, shocking and challenging, which almost anyone on the island that day can relate to. It brutally brought home our dependence on electricity, water and clear transportation routes, and how much work is involved in dealing with fallen trees and property damage of all kinds.

Windstorm debrief meetings have also been held by emergency service groups and the Capital Regional District, and neighbourhood action plans put forth by the emergency program. The island’s communication abilities should be greatly enhanced during future emergencies when the power goes out, with some 20 people signing up for an amateur radio course that began this past weekend.

But now the general public’s chance to weigh in on the windstorm experience has arrived.

The Salt Spring Community Alliance and CRD director Gary Holman have organized the meeting, which is set for the alliance’s regular monthly meeting day this Monday, Feb. 25 at Lions Hall. It will be an opportunity for people to talk about what they learned from the windstorm experience so that everyone can be better prepared both individually and as a community when the next emergency arrives.    

The current snow and deep freeze has in fact been a mini emergency scenario, with many people trapped on their property due to overwhelming snow loads on their driveways. The Emergency Operations Centre was set at Level 1 monitoring for several days, with regular communications bulletins issued by the emergency program, the EOC call centre opened around the clock, the POD system activated and Search and Rescue volunteers tasked to do wellness checks on residents known to be vulnerable.

With weather hopefully warming up soon, memories from December will soon fade. Monday night’s meeting at Lions Hall may be the last time we are motivated to get together to talk about the windstorm event and learn from each other through that discussion.

Don’t miss the opportunity to say your piece and listen to others as well.

Beddis customers on boil water advisory

Elizabeth Nolan
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Beddis customers on boil water advisory

Customers of the Beddis Water Service Area were issued a boil water advisory on Sunday due to a break in a major water main.

The Capital Regional District issued the alert Sunday evening. Around 60 customers out of the 127 in the district were without water or had reduced service for a few hours before the main was repaired.

Construction taking place in the upper part of the system is the suspected cause of the damage. As a result of the issue, the CRD issued the boil water advisory in consultation with Island Health for the entire service area.

The advisory will be lifted when Island Health is satisfied the drinking water does not pose a health concern. Residents  will be notified as soon as possible when the “all clear” is given, the CRD stated in its alert.

CRD Integrated Water Services’s senior manager Matthew McCrank noted district customers may be feeling frustrated, having undergone a recent boil water advisory following the Dec. 20, 2018 windstorm.

“Certainly the CRD recognizes the inconvenience and we apologize for that, but public safety is our primary concern,” McCrank said. “We have to ensure the integrity of the water supply before we can lift the boil water advisory.”

McCrank said the CRD would undertake flushing and then testing for bacteria on Tuesday and again today (Wednesday, Feb. 20.) They are hoping to hear back from Island Health by Thursday or Friday as to whether the advisory can be removed or if more needs to be done.

Updates can be found on the CRD’s website at crd.bc.ca, or by following the CRD on Twitter. Residents are also encouraged to register with the Public Alert Notification System to receive relevant notices. Sign up https://www.crd.bc.ca/pans.

Video: Pileated woodpecker at a bird feeder

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Video: Pileated woodpecker at a bird feeder

Grant Grayson of Fulford-Ganges Road on Salt Spring Island took this video footage of a pileated woodpecker enjoying some suet in the snowy weather.

Second City alumni present comedy night for SPCA

Gail Sjuberg
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Second City alumni present comedy night for SPCA

Alumni from the famous Second City comedy group are bringing their Paws for Laughter show to ArtSpring on Saturday, Feb. 16 to raise money for the Salt Spring Island SPCA.

Paws for Laughter is part sketch comedy and part improv, written by Second City’s Ron Harner. It has seen a successful four-year run in Los Angeles, selling out three of the last four years. Harner has recently relocated from Los Angeles to Salt Spring Island, and was approached to bring the successful show to ArtSpring for a one-time performance. Harner reached out to his colleagues in California, who all agreed to come up to Salt Spring for the show.

“It’s a really talented group of people coming up from LA,” he said. “It’s just a great night because the performers are there out of the goodness of their own hearts . . . Everybody is there for the right reasons and it sounds a little cheesy, but there’s a lot of warmth in the room.”

When it is performed in the states, all of the proceeds for the show go to the American Humane Society’s Red Star program. The program helps reunite people with their lost animals after a disaster. They find animals, treat any injuries or illnesses, and work at reconnecting people with their lost pets.

“I thought that was just the greatest thing for both the animals and the humans. If you lose your house in a disaster and then you also lose your dog, that’s just tough to take,” Harner said.

Part of the proceeds from the Salt Spring show will go towards the local SPCA, and some will go to the American Humane Society program.

Billed as “Good comedy. Good cause. Everybody wins,” the evening will incorporate Harner’s sketch comedy, performed by members of the Second City cast from LA. The other half of the evening will be an improv show, where anything could happen.

“There’s satire, some flat-out farce, there’s some improv where you never know what you’re going to get, that’s the nature of the business. It’s laughs first. The money goes to a good place, but it’s not like we’re doing dog sketches,” Harner said.

As a group of accomplished comedians who have been featured in both television and film, the cast brings a wealth of talent to the show. Cast members include Ithamar Enriquez, Jaime Moyer, Heather Horton, Frank Caeti, Joe DeBolt, Jay Pennick and Harner.

“These are just really funny people. Some of them have been on television and in movies, they’re just funny, funny people,” Harner said. “Everybody said yes when it was a lot easier to not travel the 1,000 miles to get here and perform for free.”

The show begins at 7:30. The program is one hour long with no intermission, and there will be a reception after the show. All ages are invited to attend.

Salt Spring not ready for moratorium exceptions

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Salt Spring not ready for moratorium exceptions

By CHRIS DIXON

This is a response to the Driftwood editorial of Feb. 6 titled Water Waste.

Imagine that there is a tall mountain right exactly where we now have St. Mary Lake. Let’s call it Mount Saint Mary and have our imagination fill in the details. How tall she is; how steep and are there trees?

Imagine how many people could live on Salt Spring today if our precious St. Mary Lake was a lump of rock. Not so many, because we can’t drink rock. Imagine all those addresses north and west of town which would still be forested because without water, humans wouldn’t try to live there.

Imagine your bank account; it’s like a glass of water, in that each sip you take brings you closer to being broke. Worse, your bank manager won’t let you go into debt because you’re unable to convince anyone that you could repay that debt sometime later.

Back to reality; St. Mary Lake holds a finite amount of water, and the North Salt Spring Waterworks District has a licence that very clearly describes the limits on how much water it can deliver for human needs and how much must be left for environmental needs.

The day has inevitably arrived when we can’t build any more driveways because there is no more water; it’s all committed to the driveways that are already in place. The decision to stop adding to the list of people who get water is called a moratorium. It’s not a pleasant word.

A moratorium is like any rule: it only works when we follow it. Making even one exception inevitably leads to the next request for an exception, based on the existence of the first.

We’re there. There is no extra water, just like there is no extra parking in Ganges. At this time the moratorium is necessary. It is not an opinion, nor is it a political stance. The moratorium is based on hard data derived from good science. It may be possible in the future to relax the moratorium in certain specific ways, but we’re not anywhere near that day yet.

Our shared responsibility to manage a finite source of water means that we can only consider an additional use here if we can match it with a durable reduction in demand there. Said another way, we will need to modify our culture in sustainable ways if we want to provide for additional demand.

Changing our culture is not as difficult as it sounds; when was the last time you saw an ashtray in a public space? Today, we use treated water to clean our town. Imagine a day when it is illegal to power wash the sidewalks in Ganges with drinking water.

We will learn to store rain water for various uses that don’t require drinking water.  We will pay our own way, according to our shared or individual needs. We will still have gardens, clean cars and public fountains, but they won’t compete with human needs.

When we can demonstrate that we have consistently reduced our dependence on treated water for utility uses, we will be able to have conversations about lifting the moratorium, and the first conversations will be about how to use our newly available water for the greatest good. We may call a referendum that decides to provide water for affordable housing projects. We may choose to have an annual lottery to allow x number of new connections per year. Time will tell.

Our decisions will be based on science and careful observation rather than on politics or opinion. We’ll have an eye upwind to account for climate change, because as a community we may face a day when some of us will leave our tiny island for lack of water. Time will tell.

Today, we can be thankful that our precious resource is being handled carefully and responsibly by talented and methodical people. North Salt Spring Waterworks is about making good decisions, even when they’re sometimes hard or unpopular decisions.

The writer is a North Salt Spring Waterworks District trustee.

Quilt at library honours 150 Canadian women

Elizabeth Nolan
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Quilt at library honours 150 Canadian women

Salt Spring Public Library fundraising efforts take a warm turn this winter thanks to a donation from the Stitch Dimension Quilt Guild.

The island-based group has presented the library with the result of a special group project called 150 Canadian Women — The Quilt, to be raffled off on March 9. The final date to buy tickets falls on International Women’s Day, a fitting time to recognize the contributions of the historical figures commemorated in fabric art.

The local project was inspired by quilter Kathryn (Kat) Wilson Tucker of Calgary, who created the design for Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017.

“When members of Salt Spring’s Stitch Dimension Quilt Guild learned of this project, we immediately thought it would be a perfect group undertaking. It could be broken down into ‘bite-sized’ pieces, it accommodated a range of stitching abilities, there were challenges to be met, and it was illuminating to read about fellow Canadians along the way,” said Stitch Dimension Guild member Liesbeth Leatherbarrow, who coordinated the project.

Tucker’s pattern features a different type of quilting style in each individual six-inch block. She originally released three block patterns each week on her website, along with the corresponding one-page biographies of the historical women she had selected to celebrate. Tucker made the entire collection available for purchase at the end of the project.

Leatherbarrow said while the guild members often donate their work to non-profit organizations they seldom do a single project together, so finding Tucker’s design was a fun experience.

“We really enjoyed the group aspect,” Leatherbarrow said. “We all realized this was going back to the roots of quilting in more than one way. Lots of the women who are commemorated would have been participating in traditional quilting in groups. It was interesting to speculate on that.”

Tucker decided on which pioneering women to include using two books by Merna Forster: 100 Canadian Heroines and 100 More Canadian Heroines. She matched traditional (and wonderfully poetic sounding) patterns to the women for each block. For example, Geraldine Moodie gets Friendship Star, Harriet Brooks has Shoofly, and Pitseolak Ashoona is represented by Squash Blossom.

Leatherbarrow assigned the blocks to the guild members in more random fashion. Each worked on 12 or 13 blocks on their own time through the course of a year. While Tucker’s original design featured just red and white, the local guild updated the project to include black and grey, raiding their own fabric stashes for suitable material. The group worked together on assembling the blocks, and the long-arm quilting was done at Sweet Pea Quilting in Parksville.

After deciding to take on the project, the guild was pleased to find a good match for donation in the Salt Spring Public Library, where head librarian Karen Hudson is a big quilting fan. A few of the quilters are also library volunteers, and another quilt the guild  donated hangs on the library wall.

A limited number of 300 raffle tickets are being sold, and the prize potential is enormous compared to the minimal ticket price. In addition to a handmade artwork crafted over countless hours, the winner will receive Forster’s two books on Canadian heroines and a guide to the quilt’s history that includes an index showing each block’s placement, pattern style and the woman commemorated.

Tickets will be available at the library up to March 8 at 5 p.m. (unless they sell out earlier). The draw is set for Saturday, March 9 at 10 a.m.

Sea-level rise plans in the works

Gail Sjuberg
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Sea-level rise plans in the works

Over the next three decades, ocean levels are expected to rise by at least 0.5 metres and islanders need to be ready, according to a community presentation put on by Living Oceans Society through the Islands Trust on Jan. 28.

According to Living Oceans, global sea levels have been increasing gradually over the last century, and that rate has increased over the last 20 years. The rise in water levels is expected to reach at least one metre by 2100, and could be more depending on future events. The increased water level will bring an increase in salt water intrusion, higher shoreline erosion, flooding and increased damage from storm surges and high tides.

“We should be very worried,” said Karen Wristen, executive director of Living Oceans. “We’ve got a lot of coastal infrastructure that will have to be relocated or improved. However, we’re working on exactly the timeline you work on for major infrastructure like wharves and docks and dockside facilities.”

In B.C., 80 per cent of the population lives within five kilometres of the coast. That adds up to around 3.5 million people in the province who will likely be affected by rising ocean levels. Though the effects of sea level rise will be gradually increasing over the years, Living Oceans recommends beginning to plan for higher water levels now.

“Thirty-one years is not a long time for planning, when you have to consider so many complex things like engaging people, finding resource money and all that,” said Living Oceans climate change campaigner Claude Tremblay, who facilitated the talk. “If people start thinking about it now, it’s a good time. If they ask the right questions, hopefully things will be ready for 2050.”

Living Oceans has identified four ways to deal with rising waters. These include protecting against it using natural barriers, accommodating it in the design of new buildings, avoiding it by building new projects further away from the flood plain or retreating from the coast all together.

“Managing a retreat from rising waters is often the best solution . . . You may have buildings that require major repairs in the 30 years, so it’s easier to make the decision to relocate today and just let the water keep rising,” Wristen said. “It is going to be difficult. There are going to be waterfront properties that are severely impacted and people aren’t going to like that, and there’s no answer for them at the moment . . . It’s going to be a loss in some cases, and there’s no way around that.”

One difficulty for planning for sea level rise is knowing exactly where the new coastline will be. Predicting new waterlines necessitates a precise knowledge of the topography of a given area. Using tsunami flood plain calculations as a baseline, Living Oceans recommends building at a 1.5 metre vertical setback, combined with a 15-metre setback for buildings within the Georgia Strait area.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans originally funded Living Oceans to give four talks on the subject to coastal communities. They have already exceeded that amount, and are fielding requests for more discussions from other areas.

Both the federal and provincial governments have contributed funds for the assessment of sea level rise planning. Funding also exists for the infrastructure phases. A list of funding sources and other information is available on the Living Oceans website.

For more on this story, see the Feb. 14, 2019 issue of the Gulf Islands Driftwood newspaper, or subscribe online.

Food Guide makes shift to plants

Gail Sjuberg
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Food Guide makes shift to plants

Canadians need to eat their green vegetables.

That is the main takeaway from the recently updated Food Guide, released by the Ministry of Health on Jan. 22. However, for food banks and people experiencing food insecurity, that may be easier said than done.

According to the guide, most of the calories that Canadians eat should come from plant-based sources. The new guide takes a simpler approach to nutrition than previous versions, doing away with the familiar food groups, portion sizes and recommendations for different parts of the population. Instead, it is recommended that of all the calories consumed in a day, fruits and vegetables should account for at least half of those. The other half should be split into whole grains at 25 per cent of daily calories and protein sources (again, mainly from plants) with the final 25 per cent. The Dairy and Meat and Alternatives categories have been brought under the protein portion. As for drinks, the guide recommends choosing water as a main source of hydration.

The emphasis on plant-based foods is new for the guide, which in all previous versions has included sections on both meat and dairy. However, this version recommends that Canadian eaters “choose protein foods that come from plants more often” since these foods have more fibre and less saturated fats than other types of protein foods. This does not mean that meat is off the table.  Most protein, however, should come from plant sources like soy, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds and eggs.

The other two recommendations are easier to understand. Fruits and vegetables are great sources of unprocessed nutrients, vitamins and essentially anything needed to keep a human healthy. Whole grains are also fairly easy to understand, but should not be confused with similar terms. Whole grains include foods that are made with the entirety of a grain kernel. This includes the bran, germ and endosperm. Multigrain foods contain more than one kind of grain, but these do not have to have the entire grain.

However, this emphasis on quality, healthy food can be a problem for food banks, where donations often come in the form of cheaper, calorie-heavy foods. Bringing in more fresh food and storing it properly can be a problem that food banks need to adapt to.

Simone Cazabon, the food security coordinator for Salt Spring Island Community Services, explained that “It’s going to be a question of preservation, refrigeration, freezing, distribution, pick up and that kind of thing . . . we had to apply for grants for extra refrigerators and freezers to store these items. Then we had to add in the system of pick-up and delivery that timed well with our food bank so that the food is there either on the day before or the day of the food bank so that the volunteers could sort it.”

It is possible for food banks and food security programs to bring in fresher vegetables and other healthier foods. On Salt Spring, the food bank is supplemented by gardeners who donate their crops in the summer time. Community Services also runs a community farm in the Fulford Valley that provides vegetables to their various programs. Grocery stores and restaurants in the area also donate unsold fruits and vegetables to the program.

“It just brings the attention to eating less sugary and carbohydrate-heavy food,” Cazabon said. “If we have a mentality that fresh food should be for everybody, then we need to make a society that has an economy that makes fresh food accessible.”

For more on this story, see the Feb. 13, 2019 issue of the Gulf Islands Driftwood newspaper, or subscribe online.

Editorial: Keel hauled

Driftwood Staff
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Editorial: Keel hauled

It seems for every functioning vessel on the coast, a junker with no hint of life is tied up just alongside.

Wrecked and abandoned boats have been common on the coast for centuries, but the inventory of historic steamships and wooden trading vessels downed by local hazards is seeing a boost from entirely modern sources as cheap pleasure craft manufactured in the 1960s through the 1980s reach the end of their lifespan. Many of those dying boats have been turned into temporary housing on the water; all of them are costly and difficult to dispose of, making it easier for some to leave them behind.

The Driftwood is just one voice that has called for a concrete program to deal with abandoned boats over the years. The Islands Trust made the issue one of its top advocacy areas, and its former chair Sheila Malcomson continued to champion the need for senior government action in her role as  Nanaimo-Ladysmith MP.

The federal government has finally made its own steps toward implementing legislation to assign owner responsibility and the authority to respond under various departments, with the bill expected to reach final approval this summer. Temporary funding to clean up derelict boats has also been made available. It’s being put to good use on the south coast by groups such as the Dead Boats Society, its partners in local government and community volunteers involved with inventories and beach cleanup events.

The Dead Boats Society is asking people whose boats haven’t yet sunk to sign over authority and allow the organization to collect vessels before they slip beneath the waves or get lodged on a rocky cove. Notices will be going out to abandoned-looking boats soon. This is a great opportunity for people who might not otherwise be able to act to do the right thing for their community and the environment, and it should be supported wherever possible.

Now is also the time to think about the additional regulatory tools that will be needed to deal with a growing problem, by all levels of government. Fibreglass recycling, moorage management and boat ownership licensing are just some of the areas that need to be addressed sooner rather than later. Our precious marine environment depends on it.

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