By ANDRIA SCANLAN
FOR TRANSITION SALT SPRING
Each year, World Water Day invites us to think about the value of water and the responsibility we share in protecting it. Around the world, the conversation often focuses on scarcity, infrastructure, and the growing pressures climate change is placing on freshwater systems. Here on Salt Spring Island, these concerns always feel close to home. Water isn’t just something that flows from a tap, it’s a resource we actively manage, protect, and depend on every day.
Living on Salt Spring Island means paying attention to things that people in the city might never think about. Services, infrastructure and supply chains are limited, so island life encourages greater self-reliance, thoughtful planning and strong community relationships.
Local resilience around water, food, housing and energy takes on a different meaning here. Many homes are not connected to a large shared water system but instead rely on wells. Storms cause power outages more frequently and often last longer than they might in an urban centre. We must consider wildfire risk and maintain defensible space around our homes, prepare for winter storms and practise responsible land stewardship. Nature feels closer and far more influential in daily life, and with that, a greater awareness and responsibility for the systems that sustain us.
I experienced this in my neighbourhood recently. Similar to many rural settings on Salt Spring, I live at the end of a small cul-de-sac. Off the circle are three driveways that branch out to eight properties over a few hundred metres. A couple of weeks ago, one of my neighbours knocked on my front door. She had noticed more water than usual running down her driveway and wondered if we might have a leak.
Walking over to take a look, sure enough, the water appeared to be coming from near her driveway and cascading down through our property. That caught my attention, because I had noticed some erosion at the bottom of our land recently as well.
Thanks to a conversation I’d had last year with Sue Earle at Duck Creek Farm about an outdoor water leak she experienced, I knew what to do. First, I turned off all the water inside the house. Then I shut off the main valve in the basement. After that, I walked down to the cul-de-sac where all of our water meters are located. When I lifted the lid on our meter box, the numbers weren’t moving.
Good news — we weren’t the leak. But we still clearly had a problem. The ground was dry, yet a small stream of water was running down the hill.
The neighbourhood telephone tree kicked into action. Before long we identified the source: a home two houses away, accessible from a different road, some distance through the forest that had been built 29 years ago. The original plans for the neighbourhood mapped their water from the cul-de-sac, across three other properties (that hadn’t been developed at the time) before reaching their house. They turned off the water in the house and the meter on their gauge continued to spin furiously.
North Salt Spring Waterworks District was called and had someone out to close the offending valve at the meter, but 85,000 gallons had been lost! Another neighbour ran a hose from one house to another to ensure everyone had water. But the real challenge was still ahead: finding the leak.
Local plumber Gary, owner of Polaris Plumbing, arrived with his crew and got to work. It wasn’t long before he called another well-known island expert, Ron Patterson, sometimes referred to as the island’s “water whisperer.”
Ron arrived carrying a pair of copper dowsing rods he uses to locate underground water lines. Within minutes he identified two buried pipes belonging to our property and our immediate neighbour. I had pulled the photos I took during the process from nine years before, and his accuracy was remarkable.
But the leaking property was farther away, and its underground pipes had been installed three decades ago. No one was entirely sure where they ran.
Not long after, Ron’s rods picked up a third water source. He then switched to an acoustic leak detector, an instrument that amplifies the sound of water moving underground beneath soil, asphalt or concrete. Soon enough, the source was identified: beneath the neighbour’s paved driveway. Aidon began to dig and sure enough, Ron was spot on.
From there, the steps were straightforward, if a bit messy. Matt cut the pavement, Aidon used a small excavator to remove the concrete and the first foot of soil, and then continued to dig by hand, and the problem was found. The culprit was a faulty junction between two slightly different pipes that had been connected more than 30 years earlier. The damaged section was removed, replaced and the trench filled with gravel.
As Gary and his team packed up some time later, I mused that the job involved more detective work than plumbing. He laughed and replied that water moves in mysterious ways. Then he added something that gave me pause. They were heading off to attend to three more outdoor leak emergencies on the island that had been called in that week. Each one required a similar process of service interruption, human deduction, unforeseen costs and the unfortunate waste of an important resource.
I asked if that was typical. Gary told me he sees far more of these situations than he did 15 years ago. Aging infrastructure, it seems, is catching up with us, and it’s not pretty.
There’s another lesson in this story. Community relationships matter deeply in places like Salt Spring. People rely on each other, and neighbours look out for one another in ways that can make all the difference.
City living is often built around convenience and services. Country and island living are built around resilience, planning and community support.
The takeaway: water leaks happen more often than we might think. They can’t always be prevented, but preparation can keep them from becoming disasters. Our neighbour’s costs associated with this “unpredicted and seemingly unpreventable incident” are a staggering $7,500! They plan to ask for some leniency on their water bill, but the costs are still difficult to stomach.
Every homeowner and renter should know where the main water shut-off valve is located and make sure it is clearly marked so family members or house sitters can find it quickly. It’s also wise to know where your water meter is located and how to access it.
If you plan to be away for more than a week, consider turning off your water supply. If that’s not possible, contact your local water authority to arrange shut-off and turn-on dates, or have a plumber install a shut-off valve at the meter.
Water leaks can happen for many reasons, such as aging pipes, faulty fittings, accidental damage or failing equipment. They are almost always costly and wasteful. But with a little preparation and a good relationship with your neighbours, the worst outcomes can hopefully be avoided.
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