Chris Moss, Otter Point

From Swartz Bay to Port Renfrew more than one thousand wells supply thousands of homes with clean, potable water for drinking and farming. Most of the wells up the Saanich peninsula have been replaced with City water piped from Sooke Lake.  This has allowed their aquifers to replenish over time. In areas without piped water, multiple wells cause a drawdown of water each time they are used. 

Since 2016 all domestic wells should be registered in the BC Well Data base which operates out of Front Counter BC with the nearest office in Nanaimo.

A licence is required for wells considered commercial wells, serving businesses, farms, stratas, river run, and bed and breakfast operations. These licensed wells pay a user fee for the commercial use of ground water. Domestic single-house well users pay no fee for their ground water. Registration in the BC Well Data Base is free and worth it.

The Province and local districts use well registration data when developers want permits to build houses and drill a well for each house.  If your district/municipality knows that you have a well in place they will consider the viability of granting any further building permits that may interfere with your well. If your well is not registered and no one knows about it, you may find that new subdivision wells have affected or dried out your existing well.  There is no legal recourse if this happens – you are just out of water.

The BC Wells and Aquifer Map web site shows all the known, registered and licensed wells in the province making clear how many British Columbians depend on wells.  As you drill down on the map to the south Vancouver Island area you will see exactly where the wells are located, lot by lot.  Going further you can find the complete record of each well, drill date, depth, flow rate and more. 

Each well has a static water level.  This level is the point at which the water pressure pushing the water up the well is balanced by the air pressure weighing down on the water. Provincial monitoring wells measure the fluctuations in the static water level. As the aquifer dries out there is less water pressure and the level drops.  When the aquifer is replenished from surface rains, the level goes up. 

Using domestic wells as monitoring wells makes it more difficult to see the long term changes, since every time you take water out of the well you will do so faster than the well fills up again.  So this “drawdown” is a temporary and local change in a single well. Over time, however, it is still useful to measure domestic wells and “sort out” the daily drawdown to see the longer term data and thus to see the yearly fluctuations in the aquifer. The CRD and Front Counter BC both have a wealth of information on all topics related to wells on their websites.

My wife had a great analogy for the effect of climate change on rainfall, aquifers and wells.  She said, “Pretend that you like to have two cups of coffee at a leisurely breakfast.  Your cup is like the aquifer.  The rain that falls, symbolized by your coffee, comes in a shorter period of time because of climate change.  So the coffee cup fills up with two cups of coffee at the same time. The second cup spills over the brim and is lost.  You end up with one cup of coffee.”  The same is true of wells and aquifers. We might get the same amount of rain per year, but we are getting it in shorter and shorter periods of time.  Once the aquifer is full the rest of the rainfall is lost and cannot be retained by the aquifer. Then, over a long dry period that aquifer is not refilled. 

Building rain swales, or retention ponds, will capture that excess water and slow it down so that it is able to infiltrate slowly into the ground. It would be like putting a bowl under your coffee cup to catch the excess coffee, so you can enjoy that second cup.  

Rainwater harvesting is a growing industry in the South Island and for those whose wells have gone dry, it is a necessity to catch that extra rainfall when they can.