Healthy watersheds naturally clean, filter, and store water, as well as providing key nutrients and habitat for native flora and fauna, making them vitally important to not only human health, but the health of our entire ecosystem.

Here on the Lower Sunshine Coast, we have been challenged by greatly reduced summer rainfall, with the result that the main community water source (Chapman Lake, draining into Chapman Creek) has been inadequate to supply the water used by the community.

The SCCA has launched our community education program called Watersheds and Our Water Supply, with the goal of explaining to the community how watersheds work, what challenges the Chapman Lake Watershed is experiencing, and what we can do as community members to protect our water supply and keep the watershed healthy.

We will encourage community members to sign up for an SCRD service that will email them each month, letting them know how much water their property used that month, how this compares to their usage last year and how it compares to the average usage of other properties in the SCRD. Our goal is to encourage community members to reduce their use of water, in order to maintain the health of the watershed and also ensure adequate community water supply throughout the year.

This campaign will include a series of educational posts on social media, action calls to sign up for SCRD emails, and in-depth materials organized in the section of our website called Watersheds and Our Water Supply (under the menu item Learn & Discover).