World Water Day is an annual United Nations observance day held on the 22nd of March that highlights the importance of fresh water. The day is used to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources and has been observed since 1993.
This year the Cowichan Lake and River Stewardship Society (CLRSS) and the Cowichan Watershed Board (CWB) are supporting World Water Day with FREE tours of the Cowichan Lake Weir. Discover how this vital structure supports the environment, regulates water flow, and protects fish population – and why it’s in need of an udate.
Where: Saywell Park in the Town of Lake Cowichan
When: Saturday, March 22. Tours at 10am, 11am and 12:30pm
The tour guides can help answer questions on how the weir works, provide information on the new weir design as well as collect any additional questions or concerns. Unfortunately, I will still be away and cannot participate. I encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity if you are availabe. Further information is available at both the CLRSS and CWB websites.
First let me re-introduce myself. I am a retired geotechnical engineer who came out of retirement to help manage this important project and I am pleased to be able to contribute. Born in Edmonton, but I grew up in Duncan and graduated from ‘Cow Hi’ many years ago. My wife and I have a house on Cowichan Lake since 1995 and understand the beauty and the opportunity such a privilege provides.
We have noticed the impact of climate change over the years with longer, hotter and dryer summers and how the river, and all that rely upon it, has had to endure extra low flows throughout many of the past summers. In 2023 the river suffered a catastrophic loss of an estimated 100,000 fish due to a combination of factors including low flows and high temperature. The long term health of the whole Cowichan River’s ecosystem is the main purpose of this project and continues to have the support to keep proceeding.
It’s been over two years since I provided any Project updates on this website. My role in the two aspects of the project (Weir Design and Shoreline Assessment – see links on this website) ended with those 2 projects in December of 2022. These were completed and have been helping to inform the next steps in the path forward to constructing a new weir.
Since 2022, many people have been working on what I would call the ‘softer’ aspects of the project. Those include funding, licensing, permitting, ownership and further government engagement. A ‘technical Working Group’ was been formed to work through these items with representatives from Cowichan Tribes, Cowichan Valley Regional District, Province of BC, and Domtar (formerly Paper Excellence), and the Cowichan Watershed Board (CWB). The CWB is playing a support, coordination and communications role, including bringing me back on board to help with that.
In the months ahead we expect to see information gaps closed, decisions made and a water license application put forward. Through this website, I will be providing you with my updates. Stay tuned. You can also find all the previous studies and information that were on this website here.
This Project (Weir Design and Shoreline Assessment) officially ends today along with my end of my current work term. These two pieces of work help provide key pieces of the puzzle as we move forward to make a final proposal. The weir design gives us an idea of feasibility, time to construct and approximate costs of the new capital works. It also utilizes the latest regulations and earthquake codes. The new design, most importantly, will allow for more water storage to ensure flow throughout our longer, hotter and dryer summers which will give maximum opportunity for the health of the river and all the fish and fauna that rely upon it. Another key aspect of the new design is that it maximizes the opportunity for fish to pass to and from river and lake.
The shoreline assessment provides a good snap shot in time as we have captured today’s conditions by looking at the natural boundary, lidar data, orthophotography, GIS, bathymetry data, etc and also reviewing the past 70 years of data. By using this as a base, and understanding the impact of a raised weir and using projections of climate change we are able to give a property by property impact assessment. One thing I have learned is that each property is truly unique and that it is difficult to summarize overall conclusions for the whole 110km perimeter of the lake and for the 867 properties as a collective.
This work will inform stakeholders, decision makers and approvers in the years to come as the ‘new weir project’ continues to a conclusion.
These reports and presentations of these reports are available on this website. See main page for associated TABS.
It has been my pleasure to assist in helping this particular work reach the finish line. I’ve learned a lot in process. I’d like to thank the project sponsors for their patience and thank the Provincial and Federal governments for the grant funds to support this important work. Until next time. Leroy.
NOTE: The latest news is that there has been a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which guides the ongoing collaboration of Cowichan Tribes, Cowichan Valley Regional District and the Catalyst Paper Corporation (a Paper Excellence Company) to achieve long term water supply. The MOU allows them to work collaboratively on a shared purpose which is to continue to maintain the health of the Cowichan River watershed with a goal to eventually construct a new weir. A DRAFT water license application for conservation purposes has just been submitted to the Provincial Water Regulators. This will allow the province to formally begin to review the information and provide guidance to the partners regarding next steps and expectation. The regulators process for proceeding was outlined in the July 14th presentation.
We have rescheduled our Shoreline Assessment Project Public Update for Thursday, July 14th from 6-8pm. You should receive a Post Card and/or a letter this week.
We understand that we are well into summer and vacation periods and that this timeframe may not be ideal for you. However, we think it is important to continue to share our work and wrap up this phase of the project.
We did record a version of the proposed presentation on June 16th which is available here https://cowichanlakeweir.ca/june-16-project-update/ on this website. We will cover the same information on July 14th. Looking forward to your comments and questions.
Our June 16th meeting platform Link (WebEx) failed us last night. We have used the same set up for the past 2 years without issue, however, last night it simply did not work and we could not get it resolved in time to continue. Sorry.
We did record a version of the proposed presentation which will be made available today on this website.
We plan to have another public meeting but it will take time as we need to go through the notification process which includes mail outs to all the property owners. We cannot simply email everyone as we do not have that information.
As many people do not reside on their Cowichan Lake property, we have found the virtual meeting platform to be the most inclusive way to hold these meetings.
