Chemical sunscreens will eventually find their way into [lake] water, writes WPS president Joanne Whitehead in the Driftwood. “So please, choose mineral sunscreens with only non-nano zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as active ingredients.”

Emily Brown and Lindsay Martin studied wildfire risk in our Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem. Here you can find the results of a community survey of wildfire risk concerns, a carefully researched guide for reducing wildfire risk on your property, and a comprehensive collection of resources for wildfire risk reduction and ecological restoration techniques.

WPS hosted water resources engineer Don Hodgins for a talk on potential effects of climate change on water security. Hodgins predicts that SSI will face substantial increase in water supply risk over the next several decades. By the 2080s, supply risk will be too severe to manage through simple mitigations . You can see Hodgins’s slideshow here.

WPS intern Lindsay Martin has created a resource for SSI residents to learn about our local watersheds and how scientific models predict that climate change will affect them. From the WPS’s Winter 2025 newsletter

Environmental scientist Timothy Lambert reports in our Winter 2025 newsletter on toxic waste leachates from the Blackburn landfill (which operated 1966-1911). Although the landfill had few mitigation measures to avoid leaching toxic chemicals into Blackburn Lake, the practice of burning the landfill waste seems to have avoided significant contamination of the lake, at the expense of air quality.

Hydrologist Dave Gooding has monitored flow rates in Duck Creek, 2018-2024. In this report, he concludes that low-season flow rates are significantly below the legal limit proscribed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for a salmon-bearing stream.

WPS-affiliated scientist John Millson co-authored (along with P.S. Ross, A. Parkinson, and S. Scott) a scientific paper whose findings show the presence of biocontaminants in the Fulford Harbour basin. This may need to be mitigated to safeguard Indigenous shellfish garden harvesting practices.

The Capital Daily’s Jimmy Thomson (no affiliation with WPS) explores the tension between housing and water issues in a thoughtful long-form piece. Salt Spring’s decisions now,” he writes — “whether or not to house those who need housing; to protect its vital water supply; to maintain the systems, human and natural, that keep the water clean and plentiful — are going to shape how it comes into the era of unimaginable change.”

The Driftwood’s Gail Sjuberg calls on Salt Springers to meet the fundraising goal that would protect 20 acres of forest around Cusheon Creek. Her article quotes WPS member Rodney Polden: “We are hoping to have a purchase offer by the end of this month and we are hoping to bridge the gap in our funding, which is something like $100,000.”