Comox Valley Regional District events raise watershed awareness

According to CVRD Senior Manager of Water Kris La Rose, “no matter where you live on the planet, you are in a watershed.” Photo: Heather Watson / CHLY 101.7 FM

The Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) is inviting local residents to learn about the Comox Lake Watershed this week through a series of events they are calling Watershed Awareness Days.

Events include walking tours of Comox Lake Bluffs, the Eastern Ecological Reserve, the Comox Valley Water Treatment Plant, and the Courtenay and District Fish and Game Protective Association site. There will also be a “Who Lives in the Watershed?” presentation by the BC Community Bat Program, a “Beavers, Watersheds and Wildfire Pub” hosted by the Cumberland Community Forest Society, and a “How is Your Family Connected to Water?” family activity led by a Connected by Water educator.

The events taking place throughout the week are being coordinated by the CVRD’s Connected by Water Team, which the Senior Manager of Water and Wastewater Services, Kris La Rose, explained.

“This is a team of educators and communicators that the CVRD has engaged over the past few years to help improve people's awareness of the watershed– of the importance of the drinking watershed,” he said.

The events themselves are varied, and open to anyone interested. Registration is required for most, and can be found online. La Rose described what to expect from the programming.

“You can expect to have engaging presentations by experts in their respective fields, Q&A sessions, likely some place-based language and messaging to really highlight to the participants where they are in the watershed and how important the drinking watershed is to the community. I'm sure there'll be interactive components to each of the tours as well,” he said.

La Rose broke down what exactly a watershed is, to help understand why they are so important.

“[What] we like to say is that no matter where you live on the planet, you are in a watershed. And so technically speaking, a watershed is defined as like a catchment area, so where the rain falls and drains to a single point. And so the Comox Valley is composed of numerous watersheds, they can be shrunk right down to the tiny stream size, or up to the larger creeks and rivers that we kind of know by name,” he said.

The largest watershed in the region, and the feature of this series of events, is the Comox Lake Watershed. Others in the area include the Tsolum River Watershed, Oyster River Watershed, Millard Piercy Watershed, and Morrison Creek Watershed.

“One of the unique features of a watershed is that it does not know jurisdictional bounds. So there's very few watersheds within our region that don't cross municipal, and rural area, and even regional boundaries,” he said.

La Rose said that a primary objective of the Connected by Water program is to educate the community about the importance of protecting the Comox Lake watershed in particular. He said there are many ways to do this, starting with minimizing water consumption.

“Often people look at the lake and it just looks so big and vast but they don't realize that it's really only the top few meters of the lake that actually are usable during a drought season,” he said.

Minimizing water consumption doesn’t just protect the supply of drinking water, but the watershed ecosystem.

“Because the amount of water that we pull out of the watershed does have an impact on the ecosystems up there. But then there's more direct ways that people can benefit the watershed and particularly those that recreate up in that area,” he explained. “So just treading lightly and packing out what you pack in, using garbage and toilet facilities where at all possible, being extra careful during fire season, and that doesn't just mean obeying the campfire bans, but also being very careful where you drive. Because vehicles, whether they be cars, trucks, or dirt bikes, are definitely a potential source of wildfire risk. So recreating as lightly as possible, while still getting out there and enjoying the beautiful scenery and nature that the watershed has to offer.”

Anyone interested in learning more about the largest local watershed, and the source of Comox Valley drinking water, can find more information and register for Watershed Awareness Days events online.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada. Reporting done in the Comox Valley is done in partnership with CVOX.