Pollution expert report says contaminants present in the Tod Creek Watershed

A watershed is a web of interconnected ecological systems. There are 21km of waterway, wetlands, ponds, and five lakes in the Tod Creek Watershed.

Watersheds are vital for clean water, flood control, groundwater recharge, biodiversity, agriculture, and recreation. On Wednesday, Peter Ross of Raincoast Conservation Foundation presented its Healthy Waters Preliminary Watershed Report (Oct.  28, 2024): Tod Creek to the CRD’s Environmental Services Committee (ESC) on the health of that Saanich watershed.

Raincoast—a non-profit team of conservationists and scientists—and First Nations across the CRD are working together to protect and restore regional watersheds and their natural functions through Raincoast’s Healthy Waters community-oriented water monitoring program. The program supports sampling and analysis for a variety of contaminants of concern at up to 12 important BC watersheds. Its monitoring sites collect important water and climate data to inform local adaptation strategies and water management planning for rural communities.

Collaboration for watershed health

The program trains Indigenous community members, conservation teams, and local authorities to grow capacity and support for water quality monitoring and stewardship. The key takeaway from Ross’s presentation to the board on the regional situation is that climate change and unsustainable land-use practices are threatening the watershed.

On May 10, 2023, the Environmental Services Committee approved $250K funding for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation (RCF) to monitor the Tod Creek Watershed. The objectives of the project are "to conduct a risk-based evaluation of contaminants of concern in the Tod Creek watershed in support of healthy fish habitat" and "to document possible sources of contaminants of concern in the Tod Creek watershed, including [the] Hartland Landfill and local land use."

Agriculture, septic, roads, air pollution, and Hartland run-off are all influencing what is happening in Tod Creek.

“There is no secret that part of the concerns that drove us collectively to this project were concerns around the Hartland Landfill, its operation, and suspicions that maybe it was draining, leaking, seeping pollutants of concern into the Tod Creek watershed,” Ross wrote in his report.

The Raincoast project was not designed to specifically address the Hartland Landfill but to examine the entire watershed. In his report, Ross told the committee that PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as “forever chemicals”) were detected in moderate levels during the November wet season but lower in the dry season. Water samples were taken in August (dry season), with Hartland having higher levels than other areas. PFAS have been banned in Canada since 2008/2016, however, millions of products worldwide contain the chemicals whose origins in water samples are not easy to pinpoint or limit. There are 15K of them on the market in Canada alone, according to Ross.

“I feel a great deal of compassion for local authorities that are tasked with dealing with thousands upon thousands of different contaminants in a wastewater stream, for example. It's unfair. I think, when you add up all the municipalities and authorities across Canada if they're all tasked with individually trying to figure out how to get PFAS out of the waste stream, it's not going to happen.”

“We're looking at 600 different pollutants. We get fingerprints that help us identify the contaminants of greatest concern, where they're coming from, and what we can all do about it.” Ross said. The contaminant issue, while complex, may be more solvable if their sources can be identified.

“We're watching them. There are no big red flags, from my perspective right now, but there are yellow flags, which means we need more data,” Ross said.

A call for increased resources for municipalities

He called on the ESC and other municipalities to ask the federal government for help and for the resources to do some of that work.

Water experts estimate that $75-100 million annually is needed to protect and restore BC’s watersheds. From 2021 through 2022, the province invested $57 Million in the Healthy Watershed Initiative. The Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship that oversees healthy watershed management was moved from under the Ministry of Forests in 2023 and BCs first Watershed Security Fund was developed with an initial $100 million endowment. That funding will run out in March.

The new BC Watershed Security Fund, which currently provides only $5 million annually for the entire province, would have to be scaled up to be useful and effective for local communities. At the recent UBCM convention, local governments called for the Fund to offer $100 million annually to support proactive, community-driven watershed solutions provincewide.

Raincoat’s Preliminary watershed report dated Oct. 28, 2024: Tod Creek, provided a ‘snapshot’ of water quality in six categories of water in the Tod Creek watershed, including source, stream & river, road runoff, tap, marine, and Hartland drainage. Stream and river water had the highest concentration of coliform bacteria and pesticides.

There were eight cases in which samples analyzed by Raincoast surpassed Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines for the protection of aquatic life (the Hartland water sample exceeded both the Canadian Council Ministers of the Environment (CCME) and BC long-term guidelines for nitrate concentration. Five of six water samples (all except the tap sample) exceeded the CCME’s Long Term Guideline for the protection of aquatic life of 0.1 mg/L. The Hartland water sample exceeded the British Columbia Water Quality Guidelines for total PCBs.

PCBs have been shown to cause cancer in animals and to cause a number of serious non-cancer health effects, including effects on the human immune, reproductive system, nervous, and endocrine systems.

Ongoing monitoring and plans for Tod Creek stewardship

One ongoing concern for the CRD is the looming threat of wildfires around reservoirs that can produce ash that clouds the water and makes it difficult for UV to disinfect properly. It also lends to PAH readings.

Ross told the committee “Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were found in all water samples, with most coming from pyrogenic sources like smoke and forest fires. Most of the hydrocarbons that we're finding in all of the water samples, including tap water from the soup reservoir, are coming from what we call pyrogenic sources, rather than petrogenic. That means smoke and, I suspect, forest fire. So we're getting traces of low-level hydrocarbons in all of our water in the region, from smoke.”

CRD staff report concluded Raincoast’s results from this site are “not representative of landfill leachate, but likely related to runoff from roads, parking lots, aggregate storage areas, construction, and other industrial activities occurring within the landfill property.” Investigations have determined that the source of nitrate is blast residue run-off from aggregate stockpiles reserved for future operational use.

Director Jeremy Caradonna asked Ross what the CRD could do in response to his organization’s findings.

Ross said, “Some source control and or educational opportunities are there to try to push the PFAS agenda ahead in a way that is more favorable to the environment and prevents PFAS from getting into wastewater or landfill or biosolids.”

Raincoast will continue to monitor the Tod Creek watershed, including two more sampling visits per year. It said it is committed to further exploring opportunities for First Nations partners to build their capacity to monitor and continue stewarding the watershed.