Transition Sooke News                                         April 2023 
 

The Time is Now — a great forum to start the year
News from Zero Waste Sooke
Climate Anxiety/ Work that Reconnects 
Links from Readers
It all Starts with Water  The Rain Gauge Number 2
Earth Week Events April 19-22
Recycle for Transition Sooke
Upcoming Events
Your Opinion Matters

The Time is Now — a great forum to start the year

Transition Sooke’s  March 26, “The Time is Now: Building Community Resilience Together“ Forum, was attended by about 40 people. This small but committed group included some long-time Transition Sooke members and several new faces. Throughout the event, good feelings prevailed in the room while people wrestled with potential ways to build Sooke’s resilience in the face of climate change and ecosystem loss.

Elder Shirley Alphonse of T’Sou-ke Nation opened the meeting with a water ceremony blessing, supported by Andrew Moore on alto recorder. Shirley explained that she had collected sacred water from around the world to mix together for use in blessings for this type of event. Each participant was sprinkled with this sacred water as Shirley prayed for our planet, its lands, and waters.
 

In his keynote address, Councillor Gord Baird talked about the importance of story telling using real-life experiences to explain and illustrate scientific data and facts about climate change. He used his own life stories as an example— how he met his wife and partner Ann, what he learned from her, how they are working together on Highlands Council and how they were able to get changes to provincial and municipal building codes and construction regulations to enable them to build an eco-sensitive home in the Highlands, including the design and installation of regenerative sewage and water systems such as composting toilet and rainwater harvesting.
  

Sunday, April 23 at 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday, April 19 at 7:45 p.m.

The Rain Gauge  

It All Starts with Water
 
          Second in a 12-part series by Chris Moss, an Otter Point resident 

Life as we comprehend it could not exist without water. Everything with an organic base depends on water. Humans are mostly water, on average we are 60% water.  Without water our bodies dehydrate, which is why we tell people to drink lots of fluids during hot weather or during an illness when the body is losing fluids rapidly.  Without water acting as the main ingredient of the primordial soup where life began at the bottom of a shallow body of water, life as we know it could not have developed on what was a very hostile rock planet some 3.7 billion years ago.  

Water has some interesting properties.  It can be a frozen solid or a liquid or a gas.  When it freezes it expands and it floats on water. If it became dense, as other solids do, it would sink to the bottom of the ocean and our planet would have a perpetually frozen ocean floor. Water evaporates into a gas if you put energy into it by heating it or leaving it in the sun. Liquid water can be distilled from its gas form by cooling it. When condensed, water falls from the sky; we call it rain or snow. If it remains suspended in the air, we call it a cloud, a mist or a fog.   It is so common to our lives that we take it for granted if we have it, and despair if we don’t.

In 2017 the Capital Regional District issued a report called “Climate Projections for the Capital Regional District”. It is filled with maps based on existing data from 1971 to 2000 and projections for 2041 to 2070. Where we have had a snowpack of 3 meters from 1971-2000 on our south island mountains, the report predicts that by 2050 that there will be zero snowpack. While the report deals mostly with changes in temperature and precipitation it also has a section on other impacts in our region. Changes to the climate will affect our human health, wastewater and sewage management, water supply, tourism, recreation, transportation network, ecosystems and species, buildings and energy systems, and food and agriculture. It all starts with water.

Greater rainfall in a shorter period might be good if you are a lake reservoir. Sooke Lake might accommodate a sudden influx of water in spite of the increased turbulence.  But if you are a watershed, the increased short duration rain will not have time to infiltrate the soil and much of the surface water will be shed into streams and rivers and therefore not sink into the underground aquifers. That’s bad news if you draw your water from a well. 

Also bad news if you are a salmon.  Water shortages are a real concern as our summers get dryer and longer - stretching into mid to late September.  The CRD releases water into the Sooke River to compensate for the lack of water needed by migrating salmon, but all other spawning areas are on their own.  If the salmon can’t get up to their spawning grounds for lack of water then they cannot lay eggs and the spawning run in that river can be damaged or lost. Just recently it was reported that a run of Chinook salmon has fallen below the level of reproduction in one of the northern BC rivers.   

If we lose the Sooke river run, then we may also damage or lose the bears and eagles that depend on the salmon, and the ecosystems that depend on the natural fertilizers that the decaying salmon provide. Indigenous use and western use of this resource will change.  Protecting the watersheds and keeping the rain where it falls is essential to the health of diversity in our region, and it all starts with water.

 Recycle for Transition Sooke!!
 

Help raise funds for Transition Sooke and help save our planet at the same time!

Transition Sooke has an account with the Sooke Bottle Depot.  All you need to do is take your refundable beverage containers to their depot at 2023 Idlemore Road and let them know that you are doing this on behalf of Transition Sooke.  Sooke Bottle Depot will forward the funds to Transition Sooke!  

Refundable beverage containers accepted:  refundable glass, bottles, and cans (e.g. juice, pop, wine, liquor), wine boxes, milk cartons and plastic milk jugs, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, coconut milk, plant-based beverages, and milk substitutes.

Hours: Monday to Saturday, 10:30am to 4:30 pm.  Closed Sunday and holidays

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