Watercolour by Fanny Bay Artist Laurel Meyer
Donate to help protect our fragile groundwater resources!
We are DELIGHTED to have received funding from West Coast Environmental Law Association’s Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund (see below) to begin this work ❤️and all we need now is to raise matching funds❤️
THERE ARE THREE WAYS TO DONATE:
1. eTransfers to donate@saveourgroundwater.ca (please include in the message your email address so we can thank you!), OR
2. CLICK HERE to use our Zeffy Donation Form (no commission, for non-profits only, very secure), OR
3. by cheque (please email info@saveourgroundwater.ca and we will come pick it up!)
The first 25 people who donate $200 or more will receive as a thank you gift
a beautiful, hand-crafted, limited edition, artisanal clay trivet lovingly created by Fanny Bay artist Maggie
How we got started…
Last summer, for the third or fourth year in a row, residential wells that have provided reliable water to Fanny Bay families for generations were suddenly drying up. Meanwhile, Natural Glacial Waters and Mitsubishi-owned Cermaq – the former shipping water in 500 ml bottles to local and offshore markets and the latter a hatchery supplying Atlantic salmon eggs to their BC fish farms – are in the queue for licenses. Once approved, these water rights will exist in perpetuity, and the approval process is being fast tracked.
Regulation of groundwater is important, and policy economists have been calling for BC groundwater regulation for decades. That finally came into effect in 2016 with the passage of the Water Sustainability Act. Under the new legislation, commercial enterprises diverting BC groundwater before 2016 were permitted to continue to draw water at their current rate as a transition measure, but required to apply for (and eventually secure) a provincial groundwater license.
Details of the applications are not public, but according to a November 2024 letter to Beaufort Watershed Stewards from the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, Natural Glacial Waters is applying for a license to divert 1,892,160 cubic metres of groundwater a year. Expressed on a daily basis, this is equivalent to the daily consumption of 28,961 people.
Our Goals
In the short term, our goal is to pause the province’s license application review process for these two companies for 3 to 4 years. This will allow time for our community to explore options under the Act to protect our groundwater resource, to gather and present evidence via a public hearing process, and to ensure local First Nations are informed of this process and respectfully invited to participate/engage as they feel appropriate.
In addition to licensing requirements, the Act introduced the possibility of community developed Water Sustainability Plans (WSP’s).
Our long term goal is to enable a WSP in our area that would, in accordance with the Act, oversee watershed planning, governance and protection of our fragile eco systems.
Thank you to our Feb 14 meeting sponsors:
Lighthouse Feed and Garden
Tomm’s Food Village and
Weinberg’s Good Food
West Coast Environmental Law Support
We’ve been approved! In a highly competitive process, our grant application to West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) Environmental Dispute Resolution Fund was successful!
Thank you very much to the individuals and organizations that wrote letters of support accompanying our application.
The grant money will support legal efforts to protect our groundwater. In the coming weeks, we will meet with both WCEL and our lawyer and will keep you informed of our progress.
We are at the beginning of an exciting project.
In the weeks and months ahead, you will be receiving updated progress reports. You will also be invited to (fun!) fund raising events and invited to make personal donations. Remember, this is a community-led, community-driven effort to protect our community’s water!
We respectfully acknowledge that we are uninvited settlers on the unceded traditional territory of the Sahloot (‘sath-loot), Sasitla (sa’seet-la), Ieeksun (eye-‘ick-sun), Xa’xe (‘ha’hey) and Pentlatch peoples, who together, make up the K’omoks Nation. We recognize the privileges that we enjoy, living on this land, and are grateful to the K’omoks people for their past and present stewardship of these lands and waters.
