13th June 2008
EDITOR
GABRIOLA GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT SOCIETY
WATER USE SURVEY
GABRIOLA, 2007
THE TOOLS:
The Gabriola Groundwater Management Society designed and implemented a public water use survey questionnaire for use on Gabriola Island and sent it out by mail in April, 2007.
It was sent in a bulk mailing, so anyone with junk mail blocking did not receive it.
GGMS tried to balance this with supply and drop-off questionnaire forms at several places on Gabriola Island. Raspberrys, Arbutus Building Supplies and Gords meat and Groceries helped by providing a source and drop-off point for the forms.
Because this survey went out in the springtime, the majority of our responses came from year round Island residents.
GGMS offered a Well Watcher as a prize, the lucky winner to be drawn from the respondents.
The questionnaires were collected periodically from the dropoff points and some were redeemed from the post office by paying postage for each returned survey questionnaire.
The questionnaire was designed to identify the sources of water accessed by Gabriolans and to identify how this water is used.
METHODOLOGY:
When a sampling a population group is taken, if one in ten of the population group responds, the sampling is considered to cover 100% of the group. From a general mailing GMS received two hundred and seventy six responses There are about 3,800 people on Gabriola year-round(1,520 households), and each sampling covers one household, we have a sampling that represents about one in five households, or 50%. This is a good sampling of the island residents, and a very good result for a first contact of this nature in the community.
NOTE: We averaged each response to a plus or minus 6% to provide a margin of error. This will account for the 101% total in the percentage figures.
WATER SOURCES:
Of all the results returned to us we found the following breakdown of water sources:
Approximately 72% of the group listed their well as their water source;
Water is obtained through cistern by rainwater collection by 15% of the group; water is obtained through both well and rainwater collection by 11% of the group; water is obtained through well and delivery by 1% of this group;
Water is obtained through rainwater collection and delivery by 1% of the group; and
Water is obtained by well, rainwater collection and water delivery by 1% of the group.
This means that 28% of the respondents are collecting rainwater now to supplement their water needs.
WATER TREATMENT:
Of all the respondents 39% have water purification systems.
Of these systems 15% are whole house systems*.
*NOTE: This means that water is purified in the pumphouse directly from the well or cistern, before it enters the house plumbing.
Many of these water treatment systems were installed after water testing showed the need for water purification and treatment. GGMS has enabled hundreds of Gabriola residents over the years to manage and maintain their own water supply systems safely and efficiently, and has advised and assisted homeowners to complete their water system upgrades so that safe, potable water is available to them and to their families.
GGMS maintains a laboratory on Gabriola dedicated to the testing of water for total coliforms and e-coli. We keep the price down to $20.00 a test and we staff this facility and public reporting service with volunteers. Tests are available at Raspberrys in the Village Foods Mall.
CAPTURED RAINWATER USE:
How this collected rainwater is used breaks down this way:
Drinking/cooking water 23%;
Garden water use (horticultural and agricultural) 54%;
Washing vehicles 20%;
Flushing toilets 28%;
Washing clothes 25%; and
Other uses 9%.
No response 9%.
It is noted that 19% of respondents have agricultural needs. This is a large section of the population group.
PURCHASING WATER:
The question do you purchase bottled water resulted in the responses:
Never 48%;
Occasionally 24%;
Every week 26%;
Two responses left blank (no answer).
NOTE: On reflection GGMS should have asked the additional question of how often bulk delivery water was purchased. This question will be included in the next questionnaire.
OTHER IMPORTANT DATA:
7% of the group use well watchers.
A Well watcher is a device that will tell you where the static level of water in your well is at any time. This helps the resident to keep track of the water levels in wet and dry conditions and over time can help to create a well log for the homeowner.
A well log can assist the homeowner to establish a pattern of water levels and be a good indicator of sudden drops in water levels which could signal water scarcity, enabling the homeowner to take steps to conserve in advance of a total well water supply failure.
30% of the respondents re-use greywater.
This is a responsible measure of water conservation. GGMS also knows that there is a right and a wrong way to do this. Proper greywater re-use means that the greywater is settled in a tank and fed through a raised box bed of plants or treated with other filtration/purification methods to purify the greywater. Never use greywater on ground surface applications without previous treatment. That is definitely a health hazard.
21% of the respondents have had their well go dry.
This is a factor that we want to investigate more fully. We will attempt to establish if wells are just following a historical pattern or if more wells are drying up now and if they are drying up earlier in the dry season than previously. We will also compare this information to rainfall records to establish any possible correlations between these events.
CONCLUSIONS:
Gabriolans are an educated group when it comes to water issues and groundwater issues in particular. We are very much ahead of the majority of the Canadian population when it comes to awareness and conservation, simply because our facts of life necessitate taking steps to conserve the water we have.
We have wells that go dry in the summer and fall. This is historically a way of life on our island. When a well goes dry this creates a major crisis for the people served by that well. They must access water for survival and GGMS will be looking at that need and how best to fulfill it this summer.
BULK WATER ON GABRIOLA, Sourcing Water for the Community will be a public seminal hosted by the Gabriola Groundwater Management Society on Saturday August 9th, 2008. We will be presenting speakers to discuss water systems (more than one household served by one water source) and individual water systems. This will give us a clear picture of our options and help envision our future as a community based on our water needs.
The push to have more people on Gabriola practicing rainwater catchment is the main message that GGMS wants to share with our community.
GGMS wants to enable the community to practice water conservation on many levels. This will allow our community to grow and develop in ways that will not tax our natural environment or despoil it of its resources.
The upgrading necessary to have cisterns attached to roofs can be costly. We need to raise government awareness of these issues to pursue the solutions to summer water shortages by enabling people to upgrade their water catchment systems so that they have safe and potable water available for in-house use all through the year.
In-house treatment systems need inspection and approval. Double plumbing systems could be developed to use water collected from roofs and stored in cisterns. This is another area where the government needs to advance the options for homeowners. Regulation should be modernized to meet the new conservation standards the public wants to embrace.
We need government awareness to be raised in this matter. It is much less costly to provide grants and low interest loans for the purpose of water conservation measures than to cope with a sudden and dramatic loss of water resources to an entire community. Tofino has already learned that lesson. Bermuda has had mandatory water catchment in that all new construction must be built with a water catchment system as part of the integral design of the building. They have lived like that for generations. Australia made gardening illegal in parts of the country in an attempt to conserve water. They are suffering extreme water shortages and have had to resort to extreme measures.
At the very least, captured rainwater can provide a garden with all its requirements for a complete season and recharge your aquifer at the same time in the dry season. This takes the stress off the aquifer at the time when it is the most vulnerable.
We are fortunate in this area that water is plentiful in the wet season. We should not become complacent but we should plan for the worst case scenario.
The questionnaire will be refined and sent out again in 2008/2009.
We plan to have it mailed out in the summer next time, to include our summer/dry season residents. This will give us another look at our population and water use in this community.
We hope that more residents will participate in the future. This is a valuable exercise for all of us, and a necessary social tool for our community now and for future planning.
Conservation is the only way to go on the Gulf Islands. Our home is too precious a place to treat with anything but the most careful planning and forethought.
Water conserved is water replenished, providing a source for us, our community and our environment.
APPENDIX 1
QUESTIONNAIRE
Domestic Water-Use Questionnaire
These questionnaires are anonymous and general.
To help us collect data on our island's collection and consumption of water, we ask that you
take a few moments to answer the following questions:
1. What is your primary source of water?
........... Well ...........Cistern filled by delivery ........... Cistern filled by rain collection
2. How many people live in your house?-
Summertime............................ Rest of year.........................
3. Do you have a water purification system?
In house ................. type.................. In pump house.............type..................
4. If you collect rainwater, what size is/are your cistern(s)........................................
5. How do you use the rainwater you collect ?
Drinking / cooking...... on the garden................. washing the car...............
flushing the toilet ....... washing clothes........... other
...
6. Do you buy bottled drinking water? .......occasionally ........every week
......never
7. Do you have a well-watcher? ...............Yes ............No
7.A If yes, would you be willing to give the GGMS data / readings? ........Yes
...No
7. B Please phone Jenny to share your data at: 247-9601
8. Do you have agricultural water needs? ...........Yes ...........No
9. Has your well ever gone dry?
........Yes ..........No
If so, when did it occur?....................................................................................
10. Do you re-use your "grey-water" (ie. bath & shower water, or laundry water) ?
..............Yes .............No
If so, how do you use it?......................................................................................
Any Further Comments
..
Thank you for your participation! You may be the lucky winner of a well-watcher from Gabriola inventorJohn Nicholas, if you return this questionnaire to Arbutus. Good luck.
BE GOOD WATER STEWARDS