SALT SPRING ISLAND SPINNERS AND WEAVERS GUILD

on vacation

In 2009, the Government of British Columbia embarked upon a process to modernize its water legislation. After more than four years of public engagement and policy development, Bill 18, theWater Sustainability Act (WSA), received Royal Assent on May 29, 2014.
The WSA replaces the 106-year-old Water Act. However, the existing Water Act remains in effect until the regulations supporting the new legislation are complete and brought into force, which is expected to occur in 2016.
The new legislation introduces significant changes to how BC’s water is managed. In particular, the new Act recognizes that groundwater and surface water are interconnected and that both of these sources must be managed under the same regulatory regime. Under the WSA, groundwater use will be integrated into the water-licensing system, similarly to how surface water is managed now. Regulating groundwater use will increase the certainty of the groundwater supply for existing users and the environment, especially in areas of intensive water use. It will also provide clarity around legal access to groundwater for the people and businesses that rely on it.
The Regulations under the new act will also address several other aspects of water management such as environmental flow needs (EFN), water fees and rentals, and dam safety. These topics, however, fall outside the scope of this article.
Groundwater licensing
For the first time in BC’s history, all non-domestic groundwater users will require water licences and will obtain water rights. Non-domestic groundwater users, including those that use groundwater for commercial, industrial and irrigation purposes as well as municipal water works, will be included in the licensing system.
A three-year transition period is being proposed, to allow existing groundwater users to secure priority dates based on their historic dates of first use. After the transition period, all applicants will be treated as new users and will receive a new priority date, usually based on their date of application. To encourage users to apply early, the BC government proposes to waive application fees during the first year of the transition period. However, all transitioning non-domestic groundwater users will still be subject to annual water rentals that are calculated from the date the WSA is brought into force.
Under the WSA, each new groundwater user will have to demonstrate that sufficient water is available before being granted a licence. Generally, the statutory decision maker can require an applicant for a new groundwater licence—especially for larger proposed withdrawals; for example, greater than 10 m3/day—to submit a technical assessment report signed off by a registered professional (P.Eng., P.Geo., or limited licensee) with competency in the field of hydrogeology to support their application. For an application to be successful, the technical assessment would need to demonstrate that sufficient water is available to meet the needs of the intended use, and that the requested water withdrawal will not cause undue harm to other water users or the environmental flow needs of hydraulically connected streams.
First-in-time, first-in-right
The WSA will maintain a central principle of the existing Water Act. The first-in-time; first-in-right (FITFIR) system dictates that water rights be administered according to the date of precedence of the licence. Under FITFIR, senior licensees—those with the earliest priority dates—enjoy precedence over junior licensees, regardless of the purpose for which the water is used. During times of water scarcity, senior licensees are entitled to use their full allocation of water, even if this means junior licensees cannot use any of their licensed allocation.
However, the Water Sustainability Act recognizes three modifications to FITFIR:
1. During times of water scarcity, those who use stream water and groundwater for domestic purposes are allowed to divert water for “essential household uses”—established as 250 litres per day for each private dwelling.
2. If one or more streams in an area have fallen, or are at risk of falling, below their critical environmental flow thresholds, the BC minister of environment may make a temporary order declaring a significant water shortage. The critical environmental flow threshold required to prevent significant or irreversible harm to the aquatic ecosystem takes precedence over licensed water uses of the stream and any hydraulically connected aquifer. Water in excess of this minimum flow can be used by licensed water users according to their precedence in the FITFIR system.
3. Under a Fish Population Protection Order, the BC minister of environment may order any licensee, regardless of priority date, to temporarily reduce or stop water use in order to protect a population of fish.
During the transitioning of existing groundwater users under the new legislation, applicants must provide evidence to establish their date of first use. This is particularly important in areas where an aquifer is known to be stressed and in instances where groundwater withdrawals are considered hydraulically connected to surface water sources that have existing water licences.
Hydraulic connectivity
The WSA recognizes the hydraulic connection between groundwater and surface water, particularly in shallow sand and gravel aquifers where groundwater withdrawals directly affect availability of stream water for other users and for aquatic ecosystems.
The WSA requires that statutory decision-makers consider the environmental flow needs of a stream when reviewing an application for the use of water from an aquifer that is considered likely to be hydraulically connected to the stream. It also stipulates that decision-makers establish precedence of water use between all hydraulically connected surface water and groundwater users.
In contrast, under the existing Water Act, licensees holding a water right to a particular surface water source might face restrictions during times of water shortage according to their date of precedence, while more junior, unregulated users of hydraulically connected groundwater currently remain able to continue pumping without consequence, regardless of when they first installed their wells. In addition, in the past, when surface water licences have been denied to protect a stream considered to be fully allocated, instances have occurred where wells have been installed adjacent to the stream as an alternate water source.
The WSA establishes equity between hydraulically connected stream water and groundwater users and both types of water users will be subject to restrictions in times of scarcity.
Changes to the Groundwater Protection Regulation (GWPR)
The Groundwater Protection Regulation, which sets out standards to safeguard groundwater and ensures activities related to wells and groundwater are undertaken in an environmentally safe manner, is also being updated under the WSA. The revised regulation will incorporate most existing groundwater-protection policies, as well as introduce new policies. The new policies are designed:
• To improve well-construction and maintenance standards;
• To recognize the types of professionals certified to drill wells and install well pumps in BC;
• To bring flowing artesian wells under regulatory control, and;
• To require the submission of well records for some types of wells.
The updated legislation will also regulate recharge wells, which have become increasingly popular in many municipalities as a means of dealing with urban run-off, but pose a risk of contaminating underlying aquifers.
Next Steps
Development of regulations and policy is currently underway to enable the WSA to be brought into force. However, additional regulation and policy development will be required to fully implement all provisions enabled under the new legislation. Future work includes regulations that address, for example, licensing domestic wells in specific geographic areas, and policies that enable overdrawn aquifers to be closed. Developing these policies will take time.
For now, however, transitioning the approximately 20,000 existing, non-domestic groundwater users into the licensing system remains the priority. The BC Ministry of Environment is currently hiring and training new staff to deal with the expected workload. The existing e-licensing system is undergoing enhancements to incorporate groundwater licensing. In addition, the provincial water well data base (WELLS) and the provincial aquifer spatial layers are being enhanced to make them more relevant for water management decision making.
The government also recognizes that better understanding of the province’s aquifers is required to manage available water resources effectively and sustainably. It has initiated investigations to map and study aquifers across the province, particularly in areas of heavy water use and known water shortages. The investigations currently underway include estimating aquifer water budgets, and determining groundwater–surface water interactions, hydraulic connectivity, and the effects of groundwater withdrawals on environmental flow needs.
Conclusion
Water is our most precious resource. The WSA will strengthen provincial water management in the face of growing demands for water in a changing climate. The new legislation will help to ensure sustainable management of fresh, clean surface and groundwater in BC—to meet our needs today and through generations to come.
More information on the Water Sustainability Act and its implementation is available at:.
The author, Julie Ann Ishikawa, is a hydrogeologist with BC Ministry of Environment. She lives on Salt Spring Island with her husband and family, and works in the Victoria MOE office. She is a volunteer member of the Salt Spring Island Watershed Protection Authority's Technical Working Group

THE COMPOST PILE

Unwritten rules of gardening .

The best way to garden is to put on a wide brimmed straw hat and some old clothes. And with a hoe in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.
Compost is best aged a little like a fine wine. I mean, would you prefer to drink a nice 97, or something that was made last Thursday.
When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.
Spring does not arrive until the ice is out of the compost heap.
Winter does not arrive until the ice is IN the compost. Until then, all bets are off.
Any self respecting rock will break at least one shovel before accepting its new home.
A good compost pile should get hot enough to poach an egg, but not so hot it would cook a lobster.
Gardening requires a lot of water most of it in the form of perspiration.

The Morton B. Stratton Manuscript - Cont'd

By Usha Reutenbach

The Morton B. Stratton Manuscript PART 3
In the last Cultivated Farmer newsletter, you may have read my article “The Morton B. Stratton Manuscript - Cont'd"
(If your memory comes up blank, it can be refreshed by going to: https://madmimi.com/s/b5eed6 and scrolling down to the bottom of that newsletter - it was about the manuscript having been in the Salt Spring Island Archives since 1993.)
That article was continued from an informative news item, “The Morton Stratton Manuscript”, written by Conrad Pilon.
(To re-read Conrad’s piece: https://madmimi.com/s/382076 and find the third article; it is about the Directors deciding to celebrate 120 years of serving the island’s farmers by publishing the manuscript as a book.)

Following in the Footnotes of Morton B. Stratton
Morton B. Stratton blessed our small community of Salt Spring Island with historical research he did in the early 1990’s, exploring the History of Agriculture on Salt Spring Island. He and his wife Biz had come here to retire in 1970. I first came in 1981.

As a volunteer researcher for our local archives, I discovered Morton Stratton’s unpublished manuscript in 1996; it provided the backbone of all the research I have done since for the Salt Spring Island Farmers Institute. His text reads easily, yet is meticulously evidence-based. Why had it not been published?

Why did the Manuscript languish unpublished?
The typescript manuscript was in two parts. Part One, 1859-1885, completed on August 15, 1991 and Part Two, completed October 1993. Part Two was intact with its pages of 93 footnotes following the text. Part One was liberally scattered with indications of closer to 200 footnotes - but no footnote pages followed. The manuscript was amongst others stored in a large Mandarin Orange box under one of the metal shelves in the archives room, with all the other SSI Hist Soc MS being gathered for “The Book Project”, for which Mort’s volume started out as just one of the chapters, along with Transportation, Political Development and Civic Services, and such. Selected information within this boxful of manuscripts did end up published in 1998, in The Story of an Island, by Charles Kahn. However, Morton B. Stratton’s 'chapter’ was outstanding - indeed it could stand alone. But with 196 footnote citations and commentary missing, it was hardly surprising its author would simply shrug at the thought of publication without them.

Reconstitution of Lost Information
A decade ago his interest was nevertheless piqued by my outlandish suggestion that I back-research each footnote to find its source as best I could. After all, over the years that I had been relying on his manuscript, I had been finding in the Archives room many of the sources to which his manuscript referred. For those unfound, I could simply append the sad story of his footnotes gone astray, to beg forgiveness for any footnotes that would have to say “Editor’s Note: The source of this detail has not yet been found”.

So, when Mort Stratton was asked permission for the attempt to be made in 2005, it was given. Of course he would like his work to be published! That was a good day for SSI FI Director George Laundry and I.

Meetings with Mort
We went through a few examples of what he would want edited, enough for me to feel I would know when he would like the Editor in me to interject with a note, or delete and reword. There was not much to change. He began to read through his text and make a few handwritten notes himself, which George Laundry kept. But there was a daunting amount of research to be done, to track down his original sources. Being a fellow historian, he was more interested in my stories of recent unearthings of 'evidence' that solved a niggling puzzle, clarified a confusion (there are so many of these in historical research!) or brought a whole new sunlit perspective to a shadowy corner. And despite efforts to locate the missing footnotes, they remained AWOL. The thought of publication once again subsided.

John Stratton’s Discovery
Mort’s son John found just one set of his father’s filing cards that has been invaluable to me, for what it reveals about Mort’s methods of keeping his citations under control and correctly assigned. We have proof that he had beautiful handwriting - so, deciphering the untidy writing on the cards, I could just picture him scribbling away, making his notes without looking, as he listened to a voice on a telephone or a cassette tape rolling on by, filling card after card, each with its source citation in one corner. And so few were actually made use of, within the text! One can only imagine the many more file drawers that he must have accumulated, of information all now lost, as have been the typed-up pages and pages of footnotes themselves, which have yet to surface, somewhere - or never, nowhere.

Sources of Information: including 19th century Farms and Farming of Salt Spring
So, here we are. I have surmounted the insurmountable (thanks in vast part to advances in digitization and the entire online universe). Even the Legislature of the Province of British Columbia has been busy digitizing and putting online its Sessional Papers (reports presented to the Legislature and ordered to be printed) dating from 1876. These provide evidence of remarkable leadership and teamwork, recruiting farmers to send in detailed answers to specific questionnaires, annually, 1891-1901 in order to establish a wide-ranging database of a decade of the state of agriculture in the province in its early years; Salt Spring farmers were keen participants. So I have been able to tread where Mort had gone before, while remaining cosy in my own study, accomplishing at dizzying speed what it used to take us all so long to dig out, with our pencils on paper, and our waiting in hushed rooms for the person at the retrievals desk to hunt down the obscure volume we’d requested, which as like as not would hold nothing whatever of relevance despite us reading through the whole lot, turning the pages - or scrolling at the microfiche machines, in hopes of finding something worth the effort entailed.

An Engaging Read:
including the Voices of our Farmers, from 1859 to 1993!
The Farmers Institute publication group did consider publishing without the footnotes (they found the text alone such an engaging and enlightening read). But it was the footnotes that revealed Mort’s persistence in quarrying for evidence, and the length and breadth and depth of his sources few others would pursue. He paged through handwritten diaries, ledgers and minute books, letters and notes; he listened to an astonishing number of hours of cassette-taped audio, interviews of people long dead but living in the thick of everyday history; and for footnotes whose source remains unfound, one can resort to supposing another of the many cards recording his “conversation with” someone - as he told me - at a check-out counter, in a grocery aisle or carpark, or on an old farm site. Oral history. What a trove! And Mort’s is backed by published Ministry of Agriculture Reports featuring details from hardy pioneer farmers on the ground, detailing what works and what does not, what they have to battle with, their pests, and what assistance they need from their government. I appreciate so deeply all the effort of so many who have gone before; those making records, keeping track of them, observing, sharing, and preserving them. And I appreciate the researchers who do the meticulous kind of checking for documented evidence that the likes of Morton B. Stratton have done.

If I have found such use for Morton B. Stratton’s research findings, maybe out there is a professor like him, or university student, who will value it also, well into the future.

Meanwhile, may those who prefer to read a book from cover to cover to enjoy the fruits of the author’s labour - it does make enjoyable reading without knowing where it all comes from!