Vancouver Island

A battle over resource management and clean water on south Vancouver Island came to a head when Halalt First Nation filed a petition with B.C.'s Supreme Court to review plans for a new water project before proceeding, reportsMark Hume of the Globe and Mail. Halalt opposes the North Cowichan District's plan to dig two wells and install a 1 million gallon reservoir to provide clean drinking water for residents in the Chemainus area because the wells would draw water from an aquifer below Halalt lands.

Halalt First Nation has objected to the plan since 2003, maintaining that the aquifer cannot support that many peoples' water needs without negatively impacting the connected Chemainus River and its fish stocks, reportsMark Kiemele in Klahowya. They are requesting creation of a watershed management plan, as well as involvement in monitoring programs for the area, before the project goes ahead.

Residents in the Chemainus area currently get their water from surface sources, which regularly suffer from high bacteria counts due to heavy rains, according to Hume. The District issues advisories several times a year for residents to boil their water. The District says drilling wells will draw up clean water, and it has agreed to halt their use if its three-year monitoring program shows negative impacts.

Halalt Chief James Thomas worries the District wouldn't be able to stop the pumps once they were supplying thousands of homes in an area he says is already overdeveloped. The North Cowichan municipality has admitted it wants to pursue the well project mainly for financial concerns.

Vancouver Island's largest private landowner is set to sell four timber properties on the island totaling almost 47,000 acres, reportsAndrew A. Duffy of the Times Colonist. The properties are separate from TimberWest's other timberlands and contain approximately 5.2 million cubic yards of wood altogether. TimberWest plans on selling the land to other timber companies instead of real estate developers.

– Emily Linroth

An Alaskan cruise ship impaled and killed a fin whale, arriving in Vancouver with the 70-ton animal hard against its bow. Carla Wilson of the Victoria Times Colonist reports that the animal, after a necropsy, was towed into the waters off Vancouver Island. It sunk and will become an "island of life" underwater, Wilson writes. The whale's blubber layer was thin and its stomach was empty.

Three towns on Vancouver Island have changed their bylaws to allow low-speed electric cars known as Neighbourhood Zero Emission Vehicles, reports Bill Cleverley of the Victoria Times Colonist. They're allowed on roads with speed limits of 50 km/hr or less. In light of the changes by Oak Bay, Colwood and Esquimalt, Victoria is considering a similar move.