by Jim Cooperman
Some time ago I received an email about the dismal status of lakes worldwide due to pollution, diversion, siltation, development and evaporation. In comparison, Shuswap Lake sparkles. But underneath our lake’s shimmer are problems, with more concerns on the way if development expands unchecked.
Last year, citizen groups, including the Shuswap Environmental Action Society, worked feverishly to stop developers from building private sewage plants that would pipe the treated effl uent into the lake. Numerous briefs were presented to the Columbia/Shuswap Regional District (CSRD) Board calling for it to pressure the provincial government to change the rules. Thanks in part to support from local governments and chambers of commerce, the CSRD wrote to the provincial government requesting that Shuswap Lake should have the same designation as Okanagan and Christina Lakes, to disallow private sewer outfalls.
In November, one private company began working on the fi fth pipe into the lake at Scotch Creek. A demonstration was called and nearly 100 people showed up with picket signs to protest how the provincial government encourages private effl uent discharges into Shuswap Lake. A few days after the protest, the provincial government announced a two-year prohibition against private sewage outfalls in Shuswap Lake.
The regional district now has two years to develop offi cial community plans and liquid waste management plans that will prevent further private discharges. However, the prohibition does not work retroactively and there are now fi ve approved private sewage systems that are currently piping effl uent into the Lake or will in the future. The track record for these plants is dismal, as these systems typically break down due to lack of use during the winter months. And government monitoring and enforcement has now nearly disappeared due to policy changes and budget cuts.
Unfortunately more effort than changing the rules is needed to reverse Shuswap Lake’s slowly deteriorating water quality. Shuswap Lake’s water quality became a public issue in the mid-eighties over concerns about houseboats fl ushing into the lake. The governments and houseboat companies responded so that now only houseboat grey water ends up in the lake.
A leachate detection survey done for a 1986 CSRD Report showed wastewater emerging in the shallow water areas of Blind Bay, Anglemont and Lee Creek. Tappen Bay had then and continues to have the worst water quality, due to Salmon Arm’s sewage treatment plant’s effl uent outfall into the lake, storm water drains, and agricultural run-off from White Creek and the Salmon River.
Other threats come from development that destroys critical riparian habitat; logging and road building practices that sometimes result in landslides and erosion dumping sediment into the Lake; invasive species, such as the milfoil that now infests the lake; and even from power boats that use oil-emitting, two-cycle outboard motors.
Fortunately, as a result of its large drainage area and relatively small surface area, the lake’s water is replaced about every two years. However, antiquated septic systems and poorly built systems in the subdivision built on rocky hillsides continue to leach sewage into the Lake.
Despite the lack of appropriate public infrastructure, rural communities like Scotch Creek and Blind Bay are rapidly turning into small towns. It is past time for public wastewater treatment plants and hopefully the CSRD will fi nd an affordable way to construct systems that do not outfall into the lake. If and when this happens, most private developers will eventually connect to the public system and then all that will be left is for the Salmon Arm sewage plant to convert to spray irrigation and land disposal as is done by Chase and Vernon.
Growth is inevitable, but it should be environmentally sustainable, so it does not threaten the health of Shuswap Lake. Thankfully the CSRD is now moving to implement some of the very recommendations that were in their report in 1986. Hopefully, it is not too late, as that Report then explained: “Enacting policies to maintain good water quality now, though diffi cult, is much easier than the effort, which will be required to improve water quality in the future.”
***
Jim Cooperman was editor of the BC Environmental Report. He lives above Shuswap Lake and is the president of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society. He can be contacted at jkcooperman@yahoo.ca or www.seas.ca