There Is No Magic Curtain in a Watershed
From Elk and Beaver Lakes to Portage Inlet, the Gorge, Victoria Harbour and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, it is all one connected body of water
People often look at a creek, a storm drain, a beach or a harbour and think of it as a separate place.
The Colquitz River is treated as one problem. Craigflower Creek is treated as another. Portage Inlet, the Gorge Waterway, West Bay, Rock Bay, the Inner Harbour and the Outer Harbour are all studied under different programs, by different governments, using different maps and different outfall numbers.
But the water does not know any of that.
It does not stop at a municipal boundary. It does not stop at a bridge. It does not stop at the Selkirk Trestle. It does not stop because one government owns the pipe and another government manages the seabed.
Everything is connected.
And because these are tidal waters, the water does not only move downstream toward the ocean. It also moves back inland with the incoming tide.
That is the part many people are missing.
First, follow the freshwater
Elk and Beaver Lakes form the headwaters of the Colquitz River system. Water leaves the lakes, travels through the Colquitz River and enters the eastern side of Portage Inlet through Cuthbert Holmes Park.
Craigflower Creek begins in the Highlands area and flows through View Royal. Its wider watershed includes tributaries, lakes and drainage from surrounding parts of View Royal, Saanich and Langford before entering the western side of Portage Inlet.
Hospital Creek and dozens of stormwater outlets also discharge into Portage Inlet.
The CRD describes Portage Inlet as a shallow basin connected to Victoria Harbour by the narrow Gorge Waterway. It identifies the Colquitz, Craigflower and Hospital Creek watersheds as the main freshwater systems entering the inlet. The CRD also identifies 49 stormwater discharges around Portage Inlet. (CRD)
From Portage Inlet, the water passes through the Gorge Waterway, Selkirk Water, the Upper Harbour, the Inner and Middle Harbour, the Outer Harbour and eventually the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The simple freshwater pathway looks like this:
Elk and Beaver Lakes → Colquitz River → Portage Inlet → Gorge Waterway → Victoria Harbour → Strait of Juan de Fuca
And:
Highlands and the Craigflower watershed → Craigflower Creek → Portage Inlet → Gorge Waterway → Victoria Harbour
That is easy enough to understand.
What is harder to understand is that the arrows do not always point in only one direction.
This is not a one-way river
The Gorge Waterway is not simply a river carrying water out to sea.
The CRD describes it as a narrow tidal inlet connecting Portage Inlet with Victoria Harbour. (CRD)
“Tidal” means the water rises, falls and changes direction.
On an outgoing tide, water moves from Portage Inlet and the Gorge toward Victoria Harbour and Juan de Fuca.
On an incoming tide, water from the Outer Harbour moves inland through the Inner and Upper Harbour, Selkirk Water and the Gorge toward Portage Inlet.
The system breathes in and out.
This means pollution discharged into West Bay, Rock Bay, the Outer Harbour, the Inner Harbour, the Upper Harbour or Selkirk Water does not automatically receive a one-way ticket out to sea.
Under the right tide, wind and flow conditions, some of that material can be carried back inland toward the Gorge and Portage Inlet. It may eventually reach the quieter waters and intertidal areas around the Colquitz and Craigflower estuaries.
Not every drop released at West Bay will reach Craigflower Creek. Different pollutants behave differently, and every storm and tide is different.
But nobody can honestly guarantee that pollution will remain beside the pipe where it entered.
Once it enters the tidal harbour system, it becomes part of a moving body of water.
Think of a long, shallow bathtub
The easiest way to picture the system is as a long, shallow bathtub.
At one end are the Colquitz and Craigflower rivers. Along the sides are hundreds of storm drains, creeks, ditches and shoreline discharges. At the other end is the Outer Harbour and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Now rock the bathtub back and forth several times every day.
Pour water into it from the rivers. Pour more through the storm drains. Add rain directly onto its surface. Push the surface water with strong winds. Stir it with waves, boats and propellers.
Some pollution remains dissolved in the water.
Some floats on the surface.
Some attaches to road dust, soil, organic matter and very fine sediment.
Some settles into quiet mudflats, bays, eelgrass beds and estuaries.
Then another storm, tide, wave or propeller may stir part of it up and move it again.
That is much closer to how this watershed behaves than the idea of a clean river steadily flushing everything out to sea.
The water sloshes back and forth.
There is no magic curtain at Craigflower Bridge.
There is no magic curtain at the Gorge Narrows.
There is no magic curtain at the Selkirk Trestle.
There is no magic curtain between West Bay, Rock Bay, the Inner Harbour and Portage Inlet.
Fall and winter can bring the entire system together
The most serious conditions can occur during sustained fall and winter storms.
That is when several things may happen at the same time:
The ground is saturated and cannot absorb much more rain.
Elk and Beaver Lakes are high.
The Colquitz River is carrying heavy flow.
Craigflower Creek and its tributaries are full.
Road ditches, smaller creeks and drainage channels are overflowing.
Municipal storm sewers are carrying their heaviest flows.
Sewage systems may receive large amounts of rainwater and groundwater through cracks, faulty connections and inflow and infiltration.
Polluting outfalls across the watershed are discharging at their highest rates.
High tides raise the water level throughout Portage Inlet, the Gorge and Victoria Harbour.
Strong easterly and southeasterly winds can push surface water, debris and waves through the connected harbour system.
A high tide can reduce the difference in elevation that normally helps creeks and storm drains empty into the harbour. At the same time, rivers and pipes are trying to discharge enormous volumes of water from the land.
The freshwater is pushing outward.
The tide may be pushing inward.
The wind may be pushing surface water toward shorelines, bays or up the harbour.
Waves and strong currents may disturb contaminated bottom sediment.
This is not a normal little discharge from one pipe.
It is a compound watershed event.
For hours, and sometimes for days, the Colquitz, Craigflower, Portage Inlet, Gorge Waterway and Victoria Harbour can behave like one enormous mixing basin.
I have witnessed the mayhem
Over many years working on these waters, I have witnessed these conditions several times.
The rain continues day after day. The ground is soaked. The Colquitz and Craigflower systems are full. Outfalls that barely trickle in dry weather become torrents.
The water rises against shorelines and into estuaries. Storm drains discharge murky water, suspended sediment, foam, debris and sometimes visible oily material.
The current moves one way, slows and then changes with the tide.
Wind pushes floating material into shorelines and sheltered bays. Water that appeared to be moving toward the Outer Harbour begins moving inland again. Debris and contaminated sediment can become trapped in eelgrass, mudflats and estuarine areas.
The whole system is moving at once.
It is mayhem—but not because nature is malfunctioning.
The watershed is doing exactly what a watershed and tidal estuary naturally do.
The failure is that we have covered the watershed with roads, parking lots, roofs, industrial lands, sewage lines and storm sewers, and then allowed those systems to carry pollution into the water.
My observations cannot identify the precise chemical concentration in every moving patch of water. That requires storm-event sampling, flow measurements, sediment testing, tracers and proper hydrodynamic modelling.
But direct observation makes one fact impossible to ignore:
Water and pollution can move in both directions through this system.
What enters upstream does not disappear
Pollution entering Elk and Beaver Lakes, the Colquitz River or Craigflower Creek does not vanish when the freshwater reaches Portage Inlet.
It may be diluted, moved, transformed or buried, but it does not cross an invisible line and stop existing.
The same is true of pollution entering farther downstream.
A release into West Bay, Rock Bay, Cecelia Cove, Selkirk Water or the Inner Harbour may be carried outward, inward or sideways depending on tides, currents, wind and the form of the contaminant.
Some pollutants dissolve.
Some float.
Some attach to particles.
Some settle quickly near an outfall.
Others remain suspended and travel farther.
Some chemicals break down relatively quickly. Others, including PCBs, dioxins and furans, may persist for decades.
The exact concentration will not be the same everywhere. Portage Inlet is not necessarily exposed to the same concentration found beside a harbour outfall.
But “not the same everywhere” does not mean “not connected.”
The honest scientific position is that the watershed is connected and the movement of pollution must be measured—not assumed away.
The CRD reports show a long-running problem
The CRD has now published its 2025 Core Area Stormwater Quality Program Report, published in 2026. It continues a monitoring program that has documented stormwater discharges throughout the Core Area for decades. (CRD)
Earlier CRD reports show why the long record matters.
The Gorge Waterway Initiative’s 2022 review examined 145 stormwater discharges around the Gorge and Portage Inlet. Bacterial monitoring was conducted at 43 discharges and metals monitoring at 18. The review identified continuing bacterial concerns and described copper as prevalent in the monitored Gorge and Portage discharges.
The CRD’s 2024 report continued to identify municipal discharges with high public-health concern, repeated E. coli contamination and chemical concerns involving copper, zinc, mercury and PAHs.
Around Gorge Creek and Esquimalt Gorge Park, CRD records identified continuing sanitary contamination at SW0744B even after a source was repaired and portions of pipe were replaced or relined. Other nearby outlets have been associated with zinc, mercury, copper, PAHs, oil spills and unresolved source investigations.
On the Esquimalt side of the Outer Harbour, the 2024 record also identified serious bacterial results at the Kinver-area outfalls near Macaulay Point and West Bay. Those waters are not isolated from the rest of Victoria Harbour simply because they have different outfall numbers or sit within a different municipal catchment.
These reports do not prove that every contaminant reaches every corner of the watershed.
They do prove that pollution is entering the connected system from many locations.
Transport Canada is finding the same larger problem
Transport Canada has investigated Victoria Harbour sediment, surface water, stormwater and marine life for approximately 30 years.
Its September 2025 Cecelia Cove Shoreline Remedial Action Plan says hundreds of sediment, stormwater, surface-water and tissue samples have been collected throughout the harbour.
Transport Canada reports that harbour pollution has created unacceptable risks for people consuming certain types of marine life. It also identifies some Inner Harbour, Upper Harbour and Selkirk Water shorelines where direct contact with contaminated sediment creates unacceptable risk.
At Cecelia Cove, Transport Canada found high levels of dioxins and furans in sediment and pentachlorophenol in clams. Members of Esquimalt Nation and Songhees Nation also observed oil sheen, odour, wood waste, black sediment and unhealthy marine resources during field investigations.
That is not a theoretical watershed concern.
Cecelia Cove sits beside Selkirk Water, near the lower end of the Gorge system.
Transport Canada is developing a harbour-wide Source Control and Sediment Management Plan because historical contamination cannot be separated from continuing pollution.
The federal plan identifies ongoing inputs from:
stormwater;
sanitary waste;
working-harbour activities; and
other continuing sources.
Its basic approach is to remove historical pollution, stop continuing inputs and monitor the harbour to prevent cleaned areas from becoming contaminated again. (Transport Canada)
In plain language:
There is no point spending millions of dollars cleaning contaminated mud if the storm drains and sewage sources continue polluting it.
The bottom mud remembers
When dirty water becomes clear again, people often assume the pollution is gone.
Sometimes it has simply settled.
Metals, PAHs, PCBs, dioxins, furans, petroleum products and other contaminants can attach to fine particles and organic matter. Those particles collect in quiet water, shallow bays, mudflats, eelgrass beds and estuaries.
Portage Inlet is especially important because it is shallow, averaging less than two metres in depth. It contains extensive intertidal mudflats, native oysters and approximately 50 hectares of eelgrass. The CRD states that the Gorge and Portage system contains about 80% of the eelgrass found in CRD harbours. (CRD)
The mud is not empty waste ground.
It is habitat.
Worms, clams, small crustaceans and other organisms live in it and feed from it. Forage fish and juvenile salmon feed on those organisms. Larger salmon feed on the smaller fish.
Chinook salmon are essential prey for southern resident killer whales.
The pathway is not difficult to understand:
Contaminated runoff → contaminated sediment → worms and shellfish → forage fish and juvenile salmon → Chinook → resident killer whales
Pollution entering an outfall is therefore not just a pipe problem.
It can become a food-web problem.
Pollution can reach the estuaries from two directions
The Colquitz and Craigflower estuaries receive pollution carried downstream from their own watersheds.
That can include:
road dust and tire particles;
brake-wear metals such as copper;
zinc from vehicles, roofs and other urban sources;
oil and fuel;
PAHs from combustion and petroleum;
sediment from construction and erosion;
fertilizers and nutrients;
pesticides;
bacteria and sewage contamination;
PCBs and other persistent contaminants;
pharmaceuticals and endocrine-active chemicals that are rarely included in routine stormwater testing.
But these estuaries may also receive material carried inland from the tidal harbour system.
Pollution entering West Bay, the Outer Harbour, the Inner Harbour, Rock Bay, the Upper Harbour or Selkirk Water may be moved toward the Gorge and Portage Inlet under incoming tides and certain wind conditions.
Some of it may stay suspended.
Some may settle along the way.
Some may be stirred up repeatedly and moved in stages.
That is why testing only at the creek mouth is not enough.
Testing only beside the original harbour outfall is not enough either.
We must follow both the source and the receiving water.
Municipal boundaries create paperwork, not protection
The connected watershed crosses Highlands, Langford, View Royal, Saanich, Esquimalt and Victoria, with other nearby drainage connected to the wider coastal system.
The intertidal shoreline itself crosses View Royal, Saanich, Esquimalt and Victoria.
One municipality may own the storm drain.
Another may control an upstream road.
The CRD may conduct monitoring.
Transport Canada may administer the receiving seabed.
A federal department may own adjacent land.
The Province and federal government may regulate pollution and fish habitat.
Esquimalt Nation and Songhees Nation have enduring rights, interests, knowledge and relationships with these waters.
The agency names change as the water moves.
The water does not.
The CRD’s own Gorge Waterway Initiative recognizes one geographical system that includes the Colquitz, Craigflower, Cecelia, Gorge and Hospital Creek watersheds across Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt and View Royal. (CRD)
Government already understands the geography on paper.
What is missing is management and enforcement that match that geography.
A clean sample at noon does not describe a winter storm
Water-quality monitoring must also match the conditions that actually move pollution.
A dry-weather sample from a quiet outfall may help locate a sewage cross-connection or continuous industrial discharge.
But it cannot tell us what happens when the storm system is at maximum flow.
The highest pollution loads may occur:
during the first heavy rain after a dry period;
after days of continuous rainfall;
when the ground is saturated;
when storm sewers and creeks are near capacity;
when high tides slow drainage;
when sewage systems receive excessive rainwater;
when wind and tides move harbour water inland;
when waves and currents disturb contaminated sediment.
A sample showing a contaminant concentration is only half the story.
The other half is the amount of water moving through the pipe.
A moderate concentration flowing at thousands of litres per minute may deliver a much larger contaminant load than a high concentration coming from a small trickle.
That is why proper watershed monitoring must measure both concentration and flow.
What a real watershed program would look like
We do not need another collection of isolated reports that sit on different government websites.
We need one connected program that follows the water.
1. Map the entire pathway
Every lake, creek, storm sewer, sanitary-crossing point, catchment and outfall should be connected on one public map.
The map should show:
where the water comes from;
which lands and roads drain into it;
who owns the infrastructure;
where the outfall discharges;
what contaminants have been found;
where sediment and marine life have been tested;
whether the source has been located;
what corrective work was ordered;
whether the repair was verified.
2. Sample major storm events
Testing must include dry weather, the first flush, sustained winter rain, high tides and the conditions under which the system has historically flooded or operated near capacity.
3. Measure water movement
The watershed needs continuous water-level and flow monitoring in the Colquitz, Craigflower and major storm-sewer systems.
The harbour side needs tide, current, wind and sediment-transport information sufficient to show where contaminated water and particles travel during major events.
4. Test the complete contaminant pathway
Monitoring should include bacteria, nutrients, suspended solids, copper, zinc, mercury and other metals, PAHs, PCBs, dioxins and furans, petroleum compounds, tire-related contaminants, pesticides and appropriate screening for pharmaceuticals and endocrine-active substances.
A chemical that was never tested for cannot honestly be described as absent.
5. Control pollution at its source
That means:
repairing storm-to-sanitary and sanitary-to-storm cross-connections;
reducing inflow and infiltration;
inspecting industrial and commercial properties;
enforcing prohibited-discharge bylaws;
maintaining oil and grease interceptors;
vacuuming catch basins;
sweeping contaminated road dust before it enters the drains;
controlling construction sediment;
inspecting failing septic systems;
preventing spills from heating-oil tanks, vehicles, vessels and industrial sites.
6. Protect the intertidal habitat
Cleanup and source control must protect the mudflats, salt marshes, eelgrass beds and estuaries where freshwater, saltwater and contaminated sediment meet.
That is where much of the pollution settles.
It is also where much of the food web begins.
One watershed, moving both ways
The newest CRD report is not the beginning of this story.
The historical CRD reports, Transport Canada harbour investigations, contaminated-sediment studies, Elk and Beaver Lake work, Colquitz monitoring, Craigflower Creek, Gorge Creek, West Bay, Rock Bay and Cecelia Cove are not separate stories.
They are different chapters in the history of one watershed.
Pollution entering the Colquitz can reach Portage Inlet, the Gorge and Victoria Harbour.
Pollution entering Craigflower Creek can do the same.
Pollution entering the harbour may be carried inland again by tide, wind and currents.
During a sustained winter storm, the creeks may be at maximum flow, the storm sewers may be overflowing with runoff, the tide may be high and the wind may be pushing harbour water back into the system.
At that point, there is no meaningful environmental line between “upstream,” “downstream,” “municipal,” “federal,” “freshwater” and “marine.”
There is only one body of water carrying the accumulated pollution of the entire watershed.
No bridge stops it.
No trestle stops it.
No municipal boundary stops it.
No government jurisdiction stops it.
There is no magic curtain anywhere in the watershed.
There is only water—moving downhill, moving with the tide, moving with the wind and carrying whatever we allow to enter it.
No comments:
Post a Comment