Friends of French Creek Conservation Society has worked on many projects within the French Creek watershed.
This watershed stretches from Parksville to Qualicum Beach, includes the rapidly growing area in between, and stretches up the more rural lowlands of Coombs into the mountains beyond. Our diverse group has worked on fish habitat protection, stream and marsh improvements and water preservation for people and plants in the mid to lower reaches of the French Creek watershed since the ’90s. Protection of the French Creek estuary and of Hamilton marsh are two of our ongoing projects.
French Creek is a “stressed” watershed. In 2013, when the RDN completed phase 1 of a water budget for the watershed, the surface water stress was very high in several sections. We know that two significant aquifers (recharge areas for seasonal flows) are declining. In other words, water-wise, we may be in big trouble in the French Creek watershed over the next years if we are not real careful about what happens in the watershed and how we humans use the limited water.
Besides water not being able to keep up with our human uses, significant clearcut logging has been taking place in the middle and upper watershed. It is pretty basic that when the trees are removed in huge swaths across the landscape, the ability of those lands to hold water for later use is diminished, sometimes greatly.
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Meanwhile, we are seeing the evidence of rapid growth throughout the region, including planned significant developments and it seems to some there is no end in sight for development permits when we already have a watershed that is not able to keep up with our demands.
It makes sense to us that we need to slow down on development permits and take a deeper look into the current seasonal water resources of the French Creek watershed. We need to count up our water resources like marshes and lakes, natural underground water storage areas and figure out how to protect them so this area will be liveable for humans 20 years from now.
Sunshine Goldsberry
President of Friends of French Creek
Conservation Society