The City of Nelson says it will investigate the number of fish in Anderson Creek following an incident last week that lead to the deaths of many of them, and try to drive home the importance of conserving water.
One resident said hundreds of fish died when the creek dried up. That came after the city did emergency maintenance on the Five Mile Creek intake and switched to secondary water sources in the meantime, including Anderson Creek.
A statement from the city said it can’t confirm the number of fish deaths, but it was previously only aware that the lowest reach of the creek, from Gordon Road to Kootenay Lake, was potentially fish bearing.
The city says it has alerted provincial conservation officers about the incident. But it is not sure exactly why it happened.
“Flow to Anderson Creek below the point of diversion was maintained throughout the repair time, so it is uncertain why the flow did not continue for the length of Anderson Creek,” the city said.
“We will need to determine if there were any factors that could have caused this, including the water naturally infiltrating the creek bed — this will be important in planning future repairs when maintenance is required on the city’s drinking water supply.”
The city said figuring out what caused the creek to run dry will also help them prevent it from happening again. They will further review communications procedures to tell residents about this sort of work and stress the importance of following water restrictions.
Despite moving to Stage 2 water restrictions last week, the city’s water demand remained constant until the Anderson Creek incident made the news.
“This tells us that while we are using all means of communication to inform residents that restrictions are in place, the message of how vital it is to follow these restrictions was not landing,” the city said.
The city also uses Selous Creek as a secondary water source, but it was not affected like Anderson Creek because it was locked at a preset withdrawal amount.
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