Groundwater Mapping and Education Project

The Englishman River watershed is a source of surface and groundwater for the City of Parksville and surrounding areas. The rate of growth in the area creates challenges for land development and the water supply. At this time there is little understanding of where groundwater is flowing and at what rates, where recharge areas are, what the interaction is between groundwater and surface water and where groundwater discharges into the Englishman River, therefore we do not know if the present (already low) summer flow is sustainable in light of an increasing population.

The MVIHES Groundwater Mapping and Education project consists of collecting information on the presence and behaviour of aquifers in the Englishman River, defining aquifers, assessing the elevation of the water table in the aquifers, estimating the groundwater flow path and starting to define the interconnection between the aquifers and the Englishman River.

The proposed work is community-based; well owners have been invited to offer their wells for monitoring.  Shallow dug wells will be monitored manually and electronic data loggers will be installed in selected drilled wells.   Such monitoring will allow the gathering of information on where groundwater is in the subsurface, the elevation of the water table, and how it fluctuates with the seasons.

Water samples will also be collected from selected wells and submitted for chemical analyses.  Data on groundwater chemistry will be compared to historical data to assess whether the groundwater quality is changing.  It will also be compared to available surface water quality information to estimate any correlation between surface water and groundwater chemistry

MVIHES is working with GW Solutions Inc. on this project. Background information on the Englishman River Watershed can be found in the report Englishman River Watershed (Background Information).  This report is the first step in the design and implementation of a community based watershed monitoring and protection plan.