CRD 2025 Stormwater Report —
Would Saanich Mayor and Council Swim in This Water?
From Tod Inlet to Cordova Bay, Cadboro Bay, Elk and Beaver Lakes, the Colquitz, Portage Inlet, Cecelia Creek and the Gorge, few municipalities affect as many different receiving waters as Saanich. So why are we still finding sewage indicators, contaminated creeks, algae warnings and beaches under advisory?
Here is a simple question for Saanich Mayor, Council and senior staff.
Would you swim in it?
Not on the perfect sunny afternoon after three clean samples.
Would you swim beside the storm drain when CRD has measured thousands of E. coli?
Would you put your grandchildren into a creek where bacteria have reached 12,000 with no rain?
Would you swim downstream of a watershed where CRD has recorded sewage odour, contaminated sediment, metals and tire chemicals?
Would you tell your family not to worry because the polluted pipe happens to be listed under another municipality?
That is where this story begins.
Because Saanich is not just another municipality with a few storm drains.
Saanich drains almost everywhere.
East toward Cadboro Bay, Cordova Bay and Haro Strait.
West toward Tod Creek, Tod Inlet and Saanich Inlet.
North and inward through Elk and Beaver Lakes, O'Donnell Creek and Haliburton Brook.
South through the Colquitz River into Portage Inlet and the Gorge.
Southeast through Bowker Creek toward Oak Bay.
And through the huge buried Cecelia Creek watershed into Selkirk Waters and the Gorge.
The research record identifies all of these as receiving systems Saanich either drains into or materially affects.
That makes Saanich's stormwater story different.
You cannot judge it by counting the handful of pipes sitting neatly inside a municipal column in a CRD table.
You have to follow the water.
And when you do, the picture gets considerably dirtier.
The CRD report says Saanich has one High outfall. The water tells a bigger story.
CRD's main 2025 table lists one Saanich stormwater discharge as High for Public Health Concern — Hobbs Creek at Cadboro Bay.
That sounds pretty good.
Especially compared with earlier years.
But even the CRD report itself is not that simple.
Its detailed records identify Galey Brook at Cordova Bay as High in 2025 as well, with a newly identified source requiring investigation.
Then there is Cecelia Creek.
Then Bowker Creek.
Then Douglas Creek.
Then Elk and Beaver Lakes and the Colquitz system.
The problem is the bookkeeping.
CRD assigns individual pipes and outlets to jurisdictions.
Water does not.
The CRD itself says municipal storm drains are owned and operated by municipalities and that municipalities are responsible for remedial measures where possible. It also says E. coli above 400 CFU/100 mL can indicate sewage or animal waste capable of affecting people swimming or diving. In 2025, 41% of the Core Area discharges it sampled exceeded that level at least once.
So instead of asking how many black dots sit beside the word “Saanich,” ask something more useful:
Where does Saanich's water go, and what is in it when it gets there?
Cadboro Bay: High. High. High.
Start at Hobbs Creek, SW0503, flowing toward Cadboro Bay.
CRD rated it High for Public Health Concern in:
2023.
2024.
2025.
Samples have included E. coli in the thousands, murky water and sewer odour.
There are ducks upstream.
Wildlife may account for some of the bacteria.
Good.
Then prove it.
Modern microbial source tracking can help distinguish human sewage from birds, livestock and other animals.
Because saying “there are ducks” is not source control.
And history matters here.
Previous Cadboro Bay investigation found an actual sewage-contaminated stormwater connection on private property. It was traced.
It was repaired.
That is exactly what should happen.
The question for Mayor and Council should therefore be brutally simple:
Hobbs Creek has been High for three consecutive years. Would you swim beside its outlet?
If the answer is no, why should the public be satisfied with another year of “continue monitoring”?
Cordova Bay: 12,000 E. coli — and it wasn't even raining
Drive north.
At Galey Brook near Cordova Bay Road — SW0574 — the numbers get harder to brush aside.
CRD measurements included:
2,400 E. coli per 100 mL during dry weather.
12,000 with no previous rain.
1,200 with no rain.
2,500 with no rain.
This matters because stormwater pollution is often blamed on rain washing fecal material from roads, lawns and wildlife into drains.
But here the creek was contaminated repeatedly without rain.
That does not prove sewage.
It could be a damaged sanitary line.
A cross-connection.
A private lateral.
Groundwater.
A septic pathway.
Animals.
Or another continuous or intermittent discharge.
But something is putting fecal contamination into the water.
CRD raised Galey Brook to High and called for investigation.
So investigate it until there is an answer.
Not:
“We sampled it again.”
An answer.
Where is it coming from?
Was it stopped?
Did the numbers come down afterward?
And while that question remains unanswered, another one belongs at the Council table:
Would Mayor, Council and senior staff take their families swimming along that shoreline without wanting to know first?
Douglas Creek: this is what happens when we stop looking only for poop
Then Saanich gives us perhaps the best example of why routine bacteria counts tell only part of the story.
Douglas Creek lies entirely within Saanich.
CRD's more detailed 2025 assessment found exceedances involving:
E. coli, copper, iron, zinc, phosphorus, suspended solids, temperature and turbidity.
For the first time in the monitoring series, average summer dissolved oxygen fell below the guideline.
Then CRD looked at the life in the creek.
Pollution-sensitive aquatic organisms declined.
Pollution-tolerant organisms increased.
The creek's biological rating deteriorated from good to fair.
In plain English:
The creek itself is showing stress.
Then CRD tested for 6PPD-quinone, a contaminant associated with vehicle-tire wear.
Three of eight samples exceeded the guideline.
And every exceedance occurred during rainfall.
There is the lesson.
If you sample the creek when nothing is happening, you may get a comforting number.
If you sample it when rain is flushing roads, tires, parking lots and storm drains, you can get an entirely different answer.
That is why two seasonal snapshots are useful screening.
They are not a complete modern stormwater investigation.
Cecelia Creek: don't you dare call this only Victoria's problem
Now follow Saanich water south.
This is where municipal bookkeeping becomes almost absurd.
The visible lower Cecelia Creek is in Victoria.
So it is easy to think:
Victoria's creek. Victoria's problem.
Except it isn't.
The 1998 Cecelia Creek Project mapped a drainage area of about 900 hectares.
About 90% was estimated to be impervious — roads, rooftops, parking lots and developed surfaces.
And:
Two-thirds of the watershed lies in Saanich.
Only about 130 metres of the creek remains unculverted in Victoria before entering the Gorge Waterway.
Read that again.
Two-thirds of Cecelia Creek's watershed is in Saanich.
So when polluted water comes out of the pipe in Victoria, Saanich cannot simply disappear from the story.
The water came from somewhere upstream.
We knew Cecelia Creek was filthy in 1998
This is not a newly discovered creek.
Twenty-eight years ago, the Cecelia Creek Project described it as one of the most polluted creeks in the Capital Regional District.
Investigators identified 119 businesses in the watershed and interviewed 101.
Automotive businesses represented about 58%.
The study documented practices including shop-floor washing, engine cleaning, solvents, acidic cleaners, vehicle washing, petroleum residues and other activities capable of sending contaminated wastewater toward storm drains.
It found 67 private catch basins.
About 42% were reportedly never maintained.
Another 22% were maintained only once a year.
The report's recommendations were not mysterious:
control contaminated wastewater,
enforce bylaws,
improve business practices,
maintain catch basins,
and stop contamination before it reached Cecelia Creek and the marine environment.
That was 1998.
Now jump to 2025.
CRD measured approximately:
38,000 E. coli per 100 mL at Cecelia Creek in April 2025.
And:
17,000 in September.
The September sample was taken without recorded rain.
Sediment samples have also shown elevated copper, lead, zinc and PAHs at Cecelia Creek locations.
So here is another question for Saanich Council:
How many decades does a polluted creek get before monitoring turns into elimination?
And another:
Would you swim where Cecelia Creek enters the Gorge after reading those numbers?
And yet we invite people into the Gorge
This is what makes the argument impossible to dismiss as environmental nitpicking.
Governments and communities have spent decades bringing people back to the Gorge.
Swimming.
Paddling.
Family recreation.
Banfield Park.
Community events.
That is a genuine success.
The Gorge is dramatically better than it was generations ago.
But inviting people back into the water creates a responsibility.
You cannot advertise the success at the beach while treating contaminated tributaries as somebody else's departmental problem.
Cecelia Creek enters this connected waterway.
The Colquitz reaches Portage Inlet and the Gorge.
Storm drains discharge around it.
Tides move water between these places.
A person swimming at Banfield Park does not experience:
Saanich water.
Then:
Victoria water.
Then:
CRD water.
They experience water.
Elk and Beaver Lakes: we are spending millions treating symptoms while pollution still comes from the watershed
Now move inland.
Elk and Beaver Lakes have been studied for decades.
Low oxygen.
Excess phosphorus.
Cyanobacteria.
Nutrient enrichment.
Declining recreational and ecological conditions.
CRD's oxygenation system is producing measurable improvements.
Deep-water oxygen has improved.
Internal phosphorus release has declined.
That deserves credit.
But CRD's own current estimate is that approximately 30% of phosphorus loading still comes from outside the lake — from the surrounding watershed.
The oxygenation system cannot stop that.
It cannot repair a septic field.
It cannot stop manure or nutrient runoff.
It cannot stop road runoff.
It cannot stop contaminated water moving through a tributary.
The lakes are not an aquarium where we can fix everything by pumping oxygen into the bottom.
What comes in still matters.
And as of July 31, 2026, Beaver Lake remained under an active blue-green algae advisory according to the compiled CRD record.
Would the Mayor swim through a visible cyanobacteria bloom?
Of course not.
So why should source control in the surrounding watershed be treated as secondary?
The septic problem everyone tiptoes around
Much of rural Saanich historically relied on septic systems, and a substantial portion of the municipality remains outside the sewer service boundary.
Let's get the legal responsibility straight.
Saanich does not directly regulate the construction and maintenance of individual septic systems.
Island Health oversees installation and alteration under provincial regulation.
CRD administers regional maintenance requirements.
That is true.
But it is not a magic disappearing act.
Saanich controls land use.
Saanich controls development decisions.
Saanich operates roads and drainage.
Saanich decides where municipal sewer service expands.
And Saanich has a direct interest in the condition of its lakes, creeks and groundwater.
So when septic systems are a plausible source of bacteria or nutrients, “Island Health's responsibility” is not an environmental answer.
It is an administrative answer.
We have not found a publicly available watershed-wide inventory showing every septic system around these waters by age, condition, failures, groundwater risk and repair status.
That should bother people.
Not because every septic system is bad.
Most responsible owners and farmers should not be accused of anything.
But if ten systems are failing, find the ten.
If one farm drainage source is causing a problem, find the one.
Do not smear everybody.
Identify the actual source.
And yes, this can be politically uncomfortable.
Septic repairs cost homeowners money.
Agricultural controls can cost landowners money.
Sewer extension costs money.
But clean water does not become optional because the taxpayer owns a nice property.
O'Donnell Creek: what enters the lake comes from somewhere
The tributary research already points to where deeper investigation belongs.
O'Donnell Creek is the dominant tributary inflow to the lake system and the largest identified tributary source of phosphorus.
Past monitoring has also found elevated E. coli.
Haliburton Brook has shown bacterial and nutrient concerns as well.
The technical recommendations have already called for smarter investigation:
rain-event sampling,
first-flush sampling,
multiple upstream stations,
summer low-flow sampling,
and microbial testing capable of separating human sources from animals.
That is not radical environmentalism.
That is basic source tracing.
Then Beaver Lake empties into the Colquitz
This is the part people forget.
Elk and Beaver Lakes do not end at the park boundary.
Water leaves Beaver Lake.
It enters the Colquitz River.
The Colquitz crosses Saanich.
Then reaches Portage Inlet.
Then the Gorge.
So a nutrient or contaminant problem in the upper watershed can become a downstream problem.
CRD's own historical inventory recognizes that connection.
Saanich is also spending public money restoring fish habitat in the Colquitz.
Good.
But there is something fundamentally backwards about spending money rebuilding salmon habitat while leaving upstream pollution sources unresolved.
A fish does not care how attractive the restored stream bank looks.
It needs clean, cool, oxygenated water.
Source control first. Restoration second.
Bowker Creek: another creek that changes municipalities but not water
Then there is Bowker Creek.
Saanich.
Victoria.
Oak Bay.
Three municipalities.
One creek.
CRD describes its investigation as:
“Ongoing; sewage overflow due to heavy rainfall, multiple sources.”
The sediment tells its own story.
A December 2024 Bowker Creek sample contained 224 milligrams of lead per kilogram.
The probable-effects level in the same CRD table is 91 mg/kg.
Another upstream sample showed elevated copper and PAHs.
Bowker eventually reaches the Oak Bay shoreline near Willows.
That does not mean Saanich caused every problem at Willows Beach.
It means Saanich is part of the watershed.
Again:
Follow the water.
Tod Creek shows us what we're not looking for elsewhere
Now go west toward Tod Creek and Tod Inlet.
This is where the story changes.
Because the newer Tod watershed investigations looked for far more than E. coli and a short list of conventional contaminants.
They screened for hundreds of substances, including:
pesticides
pharmaceuticals and personal-care products
PCBs
PFAS
bisphenols
PAHs
and 6PPD-quinone.
That does not mean every one of those contaminants is everywhere in Saanich.
It means modern laboratories can now look for things that older stormwater programs were never designed to measure.
Meanwhile, the CRD Core Area program still uses routine seasonal sampling primarily as a screening and priority-setting system.
That is useful.
But when a site stays High, when a creek is biologically deteriorating, when dry-weather fecal contamination keeps appearing or when the receiving water is a popular swimming area, screening should become investigation.
Tod Creek proves the tools exist.
Douglas Creek proves CRD already knows rain-event chemistry matters.
So use those tools where the risk is highest.
There is one Saanich example that proves this can actually be fixed
This story is not saying nothing works.
At SW0671 near Austin Avenue and the Gorge, CRD measured E. coli as high as:
88,000 per 100 mL.
Investigators kept going.
They found a sewage-to-stormwater cross-connection.
Saanich repaired it.
Later samples dropped to:
240.
Then:
75.
CRD lists the investigation as complete.
There it is.
The whole source-control argument in one little pipe.
Find it.
Fix it.
Test it.
Watch the number collapse.
That is success.
Why shouldn't residents expect exactly the same determination at every persistent serious source?
So here is the question Saanich Council should answer publicly
Forget the technical reports for a moment.
Forget jurisdiction.
Forget which department owns which spreadsheet.
Mayor and Council should be shown the water-quality results from Hobbs Creek, Galey Brook, Douglas Creek and Cecelia Creek.
Show them the cyanobacteria warnings.
Show them the Bowker sediment.
Show them what broader testing is finding in Tod Creek.
Then ask:
Would you swim there?
Would you put your children in beside a High-rated stormwater discharge?
Would you tell your grandchildren that 12,000 E. coli in dry weather is good enough because the source has not yet been identified?
Would you swim downstream of Cecelia Creek after seeing 38,000 E. coli per 100 mL?
Would you accept “the pipe belongs to another jurisdiction” as reassurance?
If the answer is no, then why should that level of uncertainty be acceptable for the public?
This is not about frightening people away from every Saanich beach.
Many samples are good.
Conditions change.
Not every bacterial result is sewage.
Not every beach advisory is caused by a Saanich storm drain.
That distinction matters.
But it cuts both ways.
A good sample does not prove a pollution source disappeared.
Only finding and eliminating the source proves that.
The beach sign is not environmental protection. It is the last warning after protection failed.
When Island Health posts a swimming advisory, Island Health is doing its job.
It is warning people.
But think about what that sign actually means.
The contaminant has already left its source.
It has already entered a ditch, creek, storm drain, lake or shoreline.
It has already reached the swimming water.
The sign does not clean anything.
It tells the public:
Don't touch it.
That is the final defence.
The real environmental job happened — or failed to happen — upstream.
And with Saanich affecting such a remarkable range of receiving environments, upstream is a very big place.
Stop counting samples. Start counting sources eliminated.
Saanich already reports large numbers of water-quality samples.
It CCTV-inspects infrastructure.
It replaces pipes.
It restores waterways.
CRD monitors creeks and storm drains.
All useful.
But 1,500 samples are not 1,500 solutions.
The public deserves outcome numbers:
How many sewage-to-storm cross-connections were found?
How many were repaired?
How many dry-weather bacterial sources were eliminated?
How many septic-related sources were identified and corrected with CRD and Island Health?
How many contaminated industrial or commercial discharges were stopped?
How many High sites became Low and stayed Low?
How many creeks improved biologically?
How many beach advisories became unnecessary?
Those numbers tell us whether government is winning.
Saanich has one of the biggest water-quality responsibilities in the region
Look again at the map.
Tod Inlet.
Saanich Inlet.
Cordova Bay.
Haro Strait.
Cadboro Bay.
Bowker Creek.
Douglas Creek.
Elk Lake.
Beaver Lake.
O'Donnell Creek.
Haliburton Brook.
Colquitz River.
Portage Inlet.
Cecelia Creek.
Selkirk Waters.
The Gorge.
Few municipalities touch this many different freshwater and marine receiving environments.
That should make Saanich a regional leader in source control.
Not a municipality that looks at a CRD table, sees one High pipe beside its name and says:
“We're doing pretty well.”
Because the water tells a bigger story.
We have known too much for too long
Cecelia Creek was telling us to control pollution at source in 1998.
Elk and Beaver Lakes have been studied for decades.
Cadboro Bay has a long contamination history.
Bowker Creek has been monitored repeatedly.
Colquitz restoration has been discussed for generations.
Now Douglas Creek is showing us 6PPD-quinone during rainfall.
Tod Creek is showing us PFAS, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, PCBs, bisphenols and other modern contaminants that were barely part of the conversation when much of this monitoring began.
The science has changed.
Our ability to find sources has changed.
What has not changed enough is the basic response.
Monitor. Report. Monitor again.
At some point that has to become:
Find it.
Stop it.
Fix it.
Mayor and Council: would you swim in it?
That is the question.
Not because every Saanich waterway is filthy.
They are not.
Not because every fecal result means human sewage.
It does not.
And not because Saanich has done nothing.
It hasn't.
Saanich has repaired infrastructure, found cross-connections, restored habitat and funded stormwater work.
But the evidence now covers too many places and too many decades for anybody to hide behind those successes.
The public standard should be the same one demonstrated at Austin Avenue:
Find the source.
Stop the discharge.
Fix the infrastructure.
Test again.
Prove it worked.
And until Mayor, Council and senior staff would comfortably put themselves and their own families in the receiving water, perhaps they should not be satisfied either.
Source control first. Then restore.
Technical References
- Capital Regional District. Core Area Stormwater Quality Program 2025 Report. July 2026. CRD states that municipalities own and operate municipal storm-drain systems and are responsible for remedial measures where possible; it also reports 2025 bacterial, chemical and major-watercourse results.
- Camosun College Environmental Technology Co-op Team / Veins of Life Watershed Society. The Cecelia Creek Project. September 1998. Approximately 900-hectare watershed; roughly 90% impervious; approximately two-thirds lying within Saanich; detailed industrial source-control investigation.
- Capital Regional District. 2025 Core Area Stormwater Quality Program Report — Supplemental Data. Bowker Creek, Hobbs Creek, Douglas Creek, Cecelia Creek and Colquitz sediment and water-quality data.
- CRD and related Elk/Beaver Lake watershed reports and historical record index, including tributary loading, oxygenation, cyanobacteria, septic-system responsibilities and the downstream Colquitz connection.
- Saanich Stormwater / Water Quality Research Handoff, September 2, 2026, identifying the complete set of receiving systems materially affected by Saanich and the source-control standard used in this investigation.
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