Some residents along the eastern slopes of the Beaufort Range are aware of the Natural Glacial Waters bottling plant near Rosewall Creek in Fanny Bay. Since 1997 this plant has been extracting aquifer water and shipping it to Asian markets. While the BC Water Protection Act prohibits bulk export of water, if packaged in bottles less that 20 litres, any amount of water can be exported. Natural Glacial Waters has applied to the province for a license renewal. The application is to extract an average of 5 million litres of water from the aquifer per day. The term of these licenses can be 30 years.
Beaufort Watershed Stewards are deeply concerned about the unknown effects on the local aquifers that we depend on for all our water. We conduct ground water monitoring, aquifer mapping, and stream sampling in the area and have found that there is insufficient scientific data to conclude that this large scale water extraction and export is a safe practice. We have submitted the following letter to our local Minister for Mid Island-Pacific Rim, Josie Osborne. We encourage you to submit letters to your local MLA, and the Honourable Nathan Cullen, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. Following our letter is a template to get you started.
Thank you for your concerns and action regarding smart stewardship of our water resources.
TEMPLATE for your letter:
