Nicola River watershed: Water quality report for the 2023/24 wet season

Executive summary

Water is essential for life, and steps are needed to understand, protect and restore its health in fish habitat throughout British Columbia. The Raincoast Healthy Waters program was launched in 2023 to establish community-oriented water pollution monitoring in select BC watersheds. Two Healthy Waters sampling events take place every year in each watershed, the first in the dry season (summer), and the second being in the wet season (winter). This report highlights results from the first wet (winter) season sampling carried out with the support and participation of the Lower Nicola Indian Band (LNIB) and Nooaitch Indian Band (NIB). Briefly, the Healthy Waters – LNIB- NIB team determined basic water properties (temperature, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen and turbidity) in situ at sampling sites on February 1, 2024, and February 8, 2024. Water samples were collected from three water categories, including source water (1 sample), stream and river water (3 samples), road runoff (1 sample). Samples were then pooled into composite samples and analysed for coliform, metals, nutrients and physical parameters, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), alkylphenol ethoxylates, bisphenols, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), sucralose, and 6PPD-quinone. 

Nicola River watershed

Key findings

• This preliminary assessment of water quality in the Nicola River watershed reflects the first of several site visits; our understanding of water quality in this watershed will grow with additional sampling over the coming two years (2024-26).
• We collected and analysed water in the Nicola River watershed during the wet season (February 1, 2024 and February 8, 2024).
• Road runoff was the most contaminated composite sample in the wet season; it had the highest concentrations of nutrients, metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs), alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEs), bisphenols, and 6PPD-quinone.
• The Guichon Creek sample had the highest concentration of Sucralose.
• The source water sample had the highest concentration of E. coli.
• Overall, the Nicola River watershed had relatively good water quality in the wet season:
  • There were 8 exceedances of Canadian Environmental Quality Guidelines (6 in metals and 2 in PCBs).

Background

Background – Raincoast Healthy Waters

Raincoast’s Healthy Waters Program (https://www.raincoast.org/waters/) delivers high-resolution, community-oriented water quality analysis to watersheds across southern British Columbia. The goal of Healthy Waters is to empower communities with the understanding of the status of water quality in their watersheds, to allow for local advocacy regarding both point and nonpoint source pollution. 

About Peter Ross, PhD

Dr. Peter S. Ross is Senior Scientist at Raincoast Conservation Foundation, where he oversees its Healthy Waters program (https://www.raincoast.org/waters/), a community-oriented water pollution monitoring program. The Healthy Waters program is working with Indigenous, community and government partners in 12 BC watersheds, effectively delivering interpretative guidance on 600 pollutants of concern and their putative sources. Dr. Ross is an internationally recognized pollution expert, having published over 160 scientific articles (https://www.raincoast.org/team/peter-ross/) and book chapters on pollutants of concern in water, air, sediments, fish and marine mammals. In his previous role as a Research Scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, he demonstrated the region’s killer whales to be the most contaminated marine mammals in the world in a groundbreaking 2000 study. While serving as Vice President (Research) at the Vancouver Aquarium / Ocean Wise Conservation Association, he and his team launched PollutionTracker (http://pollutiontracker.org/), the first comprehensive monitoring program for pollutants of concern in coastal British Columbia; and the Plastics Lab, a dedicated high-resolution facility that documented microplastic pollution in the Pacific and Arctic oceans. Dr. Ross is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria School for Environmental Studies.

Background – Lower Nicola Indian Band

We are the Scw’exmx, the people of the creeks, of the Nłe?kepmx Nation. We provide for our community’s needs and promote wellness, connectedness, and unity amongst our members and with our neighbours, and exercise our inherent rights and responsibilities as the recognized titleholders for the lands and its resources within our traditional territory.

The Lower Nicola Indian Band (LNIB), traditionally known as the Scw’exmx or “People of the Creeks” are part of the Nlaka’pamux Nation. The LNIB is committed to being a peaceful, prosperous and secure community made up of healthy individuals rooted in the Nlaka’pamux culture that respects ourselves, each other, the environment and all Creation. The LNIB is guided by its traditional laws and protocols and has the responsibility to care for tékm Nłe?kepmx he tmíxw (“all our territory”) and to maintain the balance between all things. 

The Lower Nicola Indian Band shows its respect for the land, the waters, the air, the salmon, the plants, the animals, the forests, the minerals and all other resources of our Nation, just as ski?kíye (our ancestors) have done. We owe our strength, our cultural identity and our very existence to the relationship that our people have always had with the tmíxw. We must respect and look after the land and resources, as these will take care of us, just as they have taken care of our ancestors.

The LNIB initiated an Aquatics and Fisheries program in 2023 to step into the light of co-management and shared decision making with the colonial provincial and federal entities managing our aquatic and fisheries resources in our unceded territory. The program has a Managing Aquatics Biologist (RPBio) and Habitat Stewardship Coordinator as well as a field crew lead and three fisheries technicians. Codifying the programming as permanent and sustainable into the indefinite future has allowed the LNIB to begin building capacity and learning how to best seize the opportunities for tangible and efficient action that will allow expansion into co-managing the Nicola Valley’s fisheries and related concerns. Throughout the past year, a variety of research and training opportunities have been seized to complement the program’s delivery, including planting of 100,000 trees to enhance river mainstem fish values (sediment stabilization post-2021 atmospheric river event/flood, increase channel morphology, riparian shading etc), spawning Chinook Salmon redd counts and location mapping, and an envelope of ‘triage’ actions during critical low flows to mitigate populations’ losses. 

As part of building a holistic understanding of our local fisheries the LNIB has initiated a watershed level pollution and contaminant monitoring program in conjunction with Raincoast’s Healthy Waters program.

A watershed based approach to sampling

We collect samples from five different categories of water in each of our partner watersheds: from source water, upstream of human impacts, down to the marine environment. 

Source water serves as an upstream reference sample, allowing us to determine which contaminants are being introduced as water traces its path down through the watershed. 

Stream and river samples allow us to investigate the quality of fish habitat directly, by collecting samples from streams, creeks, and rivers used by salmon and other fish species (either currently or historically). 

Road runoff serves as an impacted sample category of current concern, as many contaminants, including  PAHs, metals, surfactants and chemicals such as 6-PPD quinone can be washed off roadways and into fish habitat during rain events. 

Upon request, we include tap water samples in our analysis as a way to bring our homes into the conversation – we borrow water from the environment in the form of municipal or well water, and generally return it to aquatic habitats in a more-degraded state in the form of storm and sewage effluent (treated or untreated).

Marine water samples provide insight into those contaminants that may degrade fish and whale habitat in the ocean, and enable an understanding of the contribution of land-based pollutants from the adjacent watershed to the marine environment.

Collectively, the lessons learned from our partnering watersheds will contribute to a greater understanding of threats to water quality across British Columbia, and ultimately what policy changes can be implemented to preserve the quality of water for the future of salmon, whales, and people.

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