Living Lakes Canada Seeks Feedback on Water Concerns

(Image provided by Living Lakes Canada)

A Columbia Basin Water Monitoring Framework Project is kicking off and Living Lakes Canada wants to hear from you.

The goal is to select water monitoring sites and expand the Lower Columbia-Kootenay Hydrolic Region to track climate impacts.

Program Manager Paige Thurston explains:

“We want to select sites that meet both scientific needs and community priorities. So we’re reaching out to the public to let us know what their water monitoring concerns area, what their questions are about climate change in this region and try to collect data to help answer as many of those questions as possible to really build economies of scale with our efforts here.”

“We’re looking at whether there are changes in water quality. So that could be water temperature, it could be sediment in the water, it could be different types of nutrients in the water so we’re looking at changes there. We’re looking at changes in the timing of flows, so with climate change we’re seeing changes in glacial melt, snow pack, snow melt….”

Thurston says they're looking forward to hearing from the public:

“So we’ll be having three in-person meetings. We’ll also be having an online meeting over Zoom and if people aren’t able to make it to any of those options, then they’re welcome to contact our team directly and we can schedule an in-person or over-the-phone consultation interview with them.”

Thurston says they want to understand community concerns while also building synergy with other water monitoring work across the region.