For a long time we’ve more or less taken water for granted.
We turn on our taps and it comes out. No matter the time of day, no matter the time of year.
Most of the time it is drinkable without any treatment on our part as consumers.
But increasingly people are starting to realize just what a precious resource our water is, and the fact that it’s not as limitless as we once may have believed.
It is in this atmosphere that residents of MacLean Road found themselves contemplating a water test conducted by a potential developer.
Now, when explained, the testing of the water being conducted in the midst of a drought does actually make good sense.
We want to know, after all, that the aquifer in question can handle the drain in the worst of conditions. It does nobody any good to test in the middle of a monsoon when we’re up to our knees in muck and thinking about a sump pump for the basement.
No, we absolutely need to know that when the water table is at its lowest, it can handle the draw any new development would cause.
This, of course, supposes that the aquifer replenishes relatively quickly. Because if it doesn’t, that’s a whole other problem.
But residents can be forgiven for being wary about any potential large development drawing on the aquifer upon which their wells depend.
Residents of the South End of the Cowichan Valley have been experiencing what can happen when there’s little information about aquifers and infilling of population. Well drillers in the area have spoken publicly about how much further they now must drill to hit water than used to be the case.
The truth is that we still don’t know a lot about our area’s aquifers. We’re only just starting to study such things now, and whether the gathering of the science is keeping pace with development is, of course, another question.
Just look to Saltspring Island off the coast, where water has become more and more of a concern as the years go by and the population, and their expectations of how much water they need to use, grows.
Anyone who’s lived on a well and had it run dry knows just how important preserving the water source can be.
It’s something we must carefully consider in contemplation of all developments in the future.