The articles which appear below were sent to the Editor by Gail Morton from Port Alberni. They appear as links on the SOVA sight listed on this page, but I thought they were too important to not reprint here.

Water runs through it
By Neil Horner - Parksville Qualicum Beach News - May 25, 2008

When Reid Robinson looks at a stream gushing from the mouth of an underground stream, he thinks about how clean and pure water is.

Sometimes however, he also thinks of Walkerton and the drinking water tragedy of May, 2000.

As he watches the water gush out of the ground he sometimes wonders, could it happen here?

The issue at hand isn’t lax supervision or poor regulations leading to water quality issues. What’s of concern to Robinson, and to Alberni-Qualicum MLA Scott Fraser, is karst topography and the way water moves through it.

That movement, said Robinson, an experienced caver from Port Alberni, can be summed up in one word: fast.

“Walkerton is a good example of why karst terrain should be assessed for its sensitivities in terms of surface pollution,” Robinson said. “Karst streams are very similar to surface streams, in the sense they can reach velocities equal to surface streams, so there’s very little opportunity in a karst system for filtration, and what enters the surface opening can be delivered downstream in a matter of hours or days, with no natural filtration.”

Karst formations are made of limestone, which slowly dissolves over the centuries from the slight acid content of rainwater, forming the caves and caverns for which Vancouver Island is known.

What is not so well known though, said Fraser, is that the water showing up in Walkerton also flowed through a karst system.

Water runs through it- Part 2
By Neil Horner - Parksville Qualicum Beach News - May 27, 2008

When Reid Robinson looks at a stream gushing from the mouth of an underground stream, he thinks about how clean and pure water is.

Sometimes however, he also thinks of Walkerton and the drinking water tragedy of May, 2000. As he watches the water gush out of the ground he sometimes wonders, could it happen here?

The issue isn’t lax supervision or poor regulations leading to water quality issues. What’s of concern to Robinson, and to Alberni-Qualicum MLA Scott Fraser, is karst topography and the way water moves through it. That movement, said Robinson, an experienced caver from Port Alberni, can be summed up in one word: fast.

“Walkerton is a good example of why karst terrain should be assessed for its sensitivities in terms of surface pollution,” Robinson said. “Karst streams are very similar to surface streams, in the sense they can reach velocities equal to surface streams, so there’s very little opportunity in a karst system for filtration, and what enters the surface opening can be delivered downstream in a matter of hours or days, with no natural filtration.”

Karst formations are made of limestone, which slowly dissolves over the centuries from the slight acid content of rainwater, forming the caves and caverns for which Vancouver Island is known. What is not so well known though, said Fraser, is that the water showing up in Walkerton also flowed through a karst system.

“What is not largely known by the public is that the contamination that poisoned so many people in the town of Walkerton was in part related to karst systems. The contaminated water did not travel through ground seepage, where there could be natural filtration. It travelled very quickly through a karst system, which means it can travel the same speed as a surface river, only underground, so there’s no warning time and there’s no protection.”

This fact, he said, highlights the need for the provincial government to not only map karst systems, but also to protect them with beefed up provincial legislation.

“I want government to identify that karst systems are a public resource and a key environmental resource and for those systems to be delineated and protected through proper approaches,” Fraser said. “I want a legislated requirement for logging companies to report when a cave is found and then deal with it in a regulated fashion.”

Robinson agreed, pointing to the bubbling cascade springing from the ground at Cave Creek, just on the other side of the hump towards Port Alberni.

Although Robinson is deeply concerned about cave systems for a number of reasons, all of which are trumped by that of water quality.