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.

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.

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.”

In this Driftwood article, Transition Salt Spring’s Andrea Palframan describes the severity of summer drought on the Island, the risk of climate change making it worse, and some of the ways in which Salt Springers are taking action to address it.

GW Solutions, an engineering firm based in Nanaimo and specializing in groundwater, has released a map and study of groundwater recharge rates on Salt Spring Island. The results show “a high contrast between areas on Salt Spring with low recharge potential (northern and eastern island, including the peninsulas), and areas with moderate to high recharge potential (west central and southern part of the highland).

A study by Nick G. Gorski & Jillian P. Sacré of Golder Associates Ltd. found that some areas of SSI are suffering from groundwater depletion or saltwater intrusion, despite an abundance of groundwater across the region as a whole. The reason is low transmissivity of the rock in many parts of the island. The study was funded by the Salt Spring Island Watershed Protection Alliance, of which WPS is a member.

Hyradulic engineer Don Hodgins has released two studies (first, second) comparing dry-season water supply from St Mary Lake and Maxwell Lake to human demand and licensing policy. He finds that current licensing policy is functional for average hydrological years but inadequate for drought years. He also warns that water shortfalls are likely to become more common as a result of climate change, and concludes that current policies do not “seem appropriate for future planning.”