Colquitz River hit by third oil spill since January
Saanich crews are investigating the source of an oil spill in the Colquitz River, the third in the waterway since January.
The municipality was notified of the spill Thursday night and has placed booms in the river to contain the spill, said Saanich communications manager Kelsie McLeod. “Crews are continuing to investigate the source and are currently searching in the Sims/Regina area,” McLeod said in an emailed statement.
The oil was flowing from two storm drains upstream from a pedestrian bridge on the river in Cuthbert Holmes Park, said Dorothy Chambers, project lead for Salmon in the City, a group that counts and collects data on returning coho salmon spawning in the Colquitz River.
Chambers visited the scene Friday morning. She said the substance has no odour and does not appear to be furnace oil, which leaked into the river two weeks ago.
On April 22, oil leaked into the Colquitz River near Portage Inlet from a drainage pipe. A third spill occurred in January in Gorge Creek, which connects to the river. A residential heating-oil tank was confirmed as the source of that incident.
Chambers said the spills threaten the area’s biodiversity, which includes coho salmon, cutthroat trout, herring, loons, ducks and geese, among others.
“All of these spills are affecting the fish by water and environmental contamination,” she said, adding small spills can have a significant impact on bird life, because they’re less likely to alter their behaviour to avoid it than they are with a larger spill. “Very light flows kill our birds in a long, slow painful death by starvation and by hypothermia.”
Chambers said spills have been happening in the waterway for decades.
Jacques Sirois, chair of Friends of Victoria Harbour Bird Sanctuary, is frustrated that oil spills continue to be a problem in the area. “We need to trace these spills, where are they coming from. We need to stop this. We need to issue tickets, fines. It keeps happening all the time,” said Sirois, a naturalist and biologist.
Greater Victoria is home to one of the best urban natural environments in the country, with everything from whales to rare plants, he said.
But that “nature in the city” is threatened by continuing water pollution, he said.
He wants the region to better protect the waterway and the animals that rely on it.
“The message is we need to pay more attention to this,” he said.
Sirois is heartened that the region is building a sewage-treatment plant that will divert raw sewage from the ocean, but he wants more attention paid to the role of storm sewers in causing water pollution.
“Let’s spend as much energy and effort on storm sewers as we do on the sewage plant,” he said.