A new report is raising the issue of the amount of substances found in Grafton Lake.
Testing was performed on the mid-island lake by the Raincoast Conservancy Foundation’s Healthy Waters program last October. The organization partners with local communities and governments to monitor watersheds around the province, including Victoria, Powell River and Whistler. Grafton Lake serves as the water source for the Cove Bay Water System, the largest local water system on the island supplying around 650 homes.
Dr. Peter Ross is a local resident as well as a scientist and director of the Healthy Waters program. “As a Bowen Islander who relies on Grafton Lake for our drinking water at home, we’ve been here over 10 years and have been increasingly troubled by the concerns that have lingered in my mind, and perhaps those of others.”
“This is a small lake, we value it as Bowen Islanders, but it might be either underappreciated or under protected, or it might be overly impacted,” he said of the impetus for organizing the testing, which was wide-ranging and looked for 600 different pollutants.
Ross presented his findings to Bowen Council on Monday, beginning by outlining positives of the study: the lake water showed low levels of pesticides, almost exclusively from uses in the far past. Grafton ranked 17 out of 21 source water samples (Raincoast measures these from 12 watersheds around BC) on the pesticide level scale.
“We didn’t find any currently used pesticides. We found several old legacy chemicals like DDT, but we find low levels of these everywhere. They travel through the atmosphere, and they’re just background levels,” said Ross.
Pharmaceuticals however were another story. Readings found high levels of several human-consumed substances including caffeine (2nd), cocaine (4th), benzoylecgonine (2nd, a cocaine metabolite), and sucralose (1st).
“Some of the concerns that really emerged – and I would call these maybe not red flags but yellow flags – was our detection of moderately high levels of a number of pharmaceuticals and personal care products,” said Ross. He explained that since the lake is fairly shallow it makes it a vulnerable receiving body to pollutants – the lake also ranked 3 of 21 for PAH levels (chemicals from various types of burning such as smoke).
Returning to the pharmaceutical pollutants, Ross says the numbers suggest “There are human users that are inadvertently releasing human waste into the lake. Possibly the recreational users, but more likely driven by septic overflows, septic failures or lack of septic maintenance.”
Importantly though, testing of the water shows it does not exceed any established drinking or environmental quality guidelines. Lake water is currently chlorinated to eliminate pathogens, and is expected to undergo enhanced treatment once the long-delayed Cove Bay Water Treatment Plant is finally brought fully online. But Ross points out that many pollutants lack their own specific guidelines, so we should still be working to keep substances such as caffeine or cocaine out of the lake.
Ross stressed he was not presenting the findings as an advocacy effort, but rather as scientific data to build off of. He suggested some best practices to reduce pollutant numbers employed in other water sources experiencing the same issues. These included increased septic monitoring and maintenance, riparian zone protections, road runoff and water quality monitoring, and a look at residential education and recreational practices.
The last two received particular attention as Ross explained it’s within everybody’s control to address them at the source. Examples included using the BC Medications Return Plan to dispose of meds (Cates Pharmasave participates) instead of flushing them down the toilet, a look at signage or messaging around the lake, and asking people to mind what human or foreign substances they’re using while in or near the lake.
“I think that the data tell us that we can be better custodians, better homeowners, better business operators, better stewards… To me, the opportunity lies in how can we engage with those sources and activities that are polluting Grafton Lake,” said Ross.
