From the Times-Colonist - Feb 7, 2011

by Judith Lavoie

A deluge of connected applications to extract water for bottling — from more than 40 streams around four remote inlets on the B.C. Central Coast — has prompted a flurry of requests for a full provincial environmental assessment.

The applications, now individually under consideration by the Natural Resource Operations Ministry, envisage taking about 112,000 litres a day from each of the streams. The water would then be barged to Vancouver and bottled.

"With 40 or more streams involved that's an industrial operation by anyone's definition," said Lannie Keller of the Friends of Bute Inlet.

"But that ministry is looking only at each individual application and not the entire project."

Although three numbered companies and two First Nations — the Kwiakah First Nation of Campbell River and Da'naxda'xw Awaetlala of Alert Bay — are named on the applications, the common thread is William Chornobay of Langley, who could not be contacted Monday.

"They are all part of a single scheme," said Arthur Caldicott, an energy analyst and writer who has researched the applications for the publication Watershed Sentinel.

"It's a unique phenomenon. We've never seen anything like it before, even during the boom in bottled water in 2007. . . . We have no idea how these are being assessed by government," he said.

Between 60 and 70 water-use licences have been issued by the province in the past, but many have either been abandoned or are not fully used, Caldicott said.

All recent applications are around Jervis, Toba, Bute and Knight inlets.

As the applications are connected, the cumulative environmental effects — rather than the effects of individual withdrawals — need to be studied, say the Campbell River Council of Canadians, Friends of Bute Inlet, Sierra Club Malaspina, Sierra Club Quadra Island and Sunshine Coast Conservation Association. All have asked Environment Minister Murray Coell for an environmental assessment.

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