Cranberry Lake has some new friends and they are concerned that not enough is being done to understand or protect their neighbourhood body of water.
Members of the Cranberry Lake Watershed Preservation Society (CLWPS), a non-profit environmental group formed in the summer 2014, made a presentation to City of Powell River Council Thursday, February 5, to ask it to consider increasing the buffer zone on a piece of property being logged in the lake’s watershed.
“We’re not anti-logging,” said Jerry Eskes, CLWPS president. He explained to the Peak that the group was concerned about how close logging would take place to Miller Creek, perhaps one of the only sources of water flowing into Cranberry Lake. The creek runs almost through the middle of the parcel being cleared east of the lake, near the city’s water treatment plant.
Eskes explained that watersheds or catchment basins are the terms used to define the geographical area which collects water from rain, melting snow or ice and feeds it to a single point, usually another body of water such as a wetland, river, lake, reservoir, estuary or sea. And, he added, wherever people live, any chemical fertilizer or detergent that is used also washes down to that single point as well.
“Everywhere is a watershed,” Eskes said. While the society’s focus is on Cranberry Lake’s catchment basin in particular, he hopes to raise greater awareness about watersheds in general and the importance of protecting fresh water from pollution. “We want to be watchdogs for the watershed.”
Looking at a topographical map, a map which shows geographic elevations, is one of the clearest ways to see how water flows toward Cranberry Lake. While some of the lake’s watershed is on its western side, where the majority of Cranberry Lake residents’ homes are located, a larger part of the lake’s watershed lies to the east between Powell and Haslam lakes.
The group went to the city in the hopes of having a 30-metre buffer installed around the creek to protect it from carrying excessive amounts of silt down stream to the lake, said Eskes.
While the silt is not bad in and of itself, it can be harmful to lakes as it builds up on the bottom over time. As a lake becomes shallower oxygen content in the water is reduced which encourages algae and weed growth. It also takes its toll on fish that require deeper, cooler water to thrive in.
Council agreed that more buffer was needed to protect water integrity, so they expanded it to 20 metres, something the watershed society is happy with, Eskes said.
The group will now try to determine who the owners of the land further upstream on Miller Creek are and ask them for similar protection, if ever they decide to log the area, Eskes added.
Concerns have been raised about the current health of the lake. A number of invasive plants grow there, including the prolific white lilies that seem to thrive in the lake, but Eskes said no one really knows what its status is.
“Everyone has an opinion, but the opinions are not based on fact,” Eskes said. “They’re based on looking out the window or what someone told them or what they heard. Let’s do this scientifically.”
To that end, the non-profit is looking to apply for funding to have qualified scientists do a hydrological study on the lake in the hopes of better understanding where the lake’s water comes from and the state of the ecosystem’s health.
“Cranberry Lake has very little inflow,” said Eskes, explaining that in the summer Miller Creek slows to a trickle. And on the outflow, McFall Creek runs all summer, he said, but the level of the lake does not seem to change much.
The group requested the city provide any past studies done around the lake to provide a glimpse into its history.
Attractive home prices and abundant hiking trails brought Eskes to Powell River to retire three years years ago from Vancouver Island. He lives on Drake Street up the hill from the lake. Once he became interested in the ecology and hydrology of the lake he went to the Powell River Museum and Archives Society to find out as much as he could about the area’s history.
There, he discovered newspaper stories and plans for the construction of the 1959 water main project, a 1.3 kilometre buried pipeline which carries the water from Haslam Lake to the city’s water treatment plant, just up the hill from Cranberry Lake.
The project took three years to complete and crews excavated tonnes of earth to bury the 36-inch concrete main at the right depth. Eskes said in looking at the project’s plans he is able to determine that the trench dug for the main is along the historical creek bed of Miller Creek.
When the project was completed in 1962, the creek rerouted to flow along the earth piled up along the main’s corridor, but there is also water on the other side as well, not supplied by Miller Creek. This is water that no one knows the source of, but Eskes is certain it does not come from Haslam Lake directly.
“Maybe there are springs,” he said. Historically, the lowland was previously swampy, he explained. “That’s why we need a comprehensive hydrological survey of the area done to find out what it was like before and compare that to what it is like now.”
Eskes said that this issue is of particular concern now that the city has applied for funding to twin the water main, a project which would require unearthing the buried main and potentially further impacting the creek and Cranberry Lake.
Besides acting as a watchdog for the watershed the group would like to see local government be more engaged in public education of residents around being watershed-wise. He explained that in North America one of the largest sources of pollution for fresh water comes from storm sewers which pick up contaminants from people’s yards and driveways.
Eskes is asking anyone who is a friend of Cranberry Lake to become a member of the watershed society. The president said that the group is planning a membership drive to start soon and it plans to be at public events signing people up.
“We’re wanting to know what the city is planning and we want to make sure we’re standing on guard for Cranberry Lake,” Eskes said.
For more information about the non-profit society, readers can contact Eskes at [email protected].
