water monitoring

Hoy Creek Hatchery named Grand Champion

A photo with the Communities in Bloom ‘Grand Champion’ certificate. Left to right: Robbin Whachell, HSWS Director of Communications; Kyle Uno, HSWS President; and Anne Woosnam, HSWS Secretary / Asst. Hatchery Manager.

The City of Coquitlam - Municipality hosted an evening to celebrate their Communities in Bloom - Collectivités en fleurs accolades on Nov. 10, 2022 at the Vancouver Golf & Country Club. Hoy/Scott Watershed Society was acknowledged as 'Grand Champions' for the Hoy Creek Hatchery with the Coquitlam receiving the prestigious 5 Bloom Gold status.

A big thanks to assistant hatchery manager, Anne Woosnam, who led our Coquitlam in Bloom judges' tour when they came through town in July 2022.

Following their evaluation, volunteer CiB judges Berta Briggs and Larry Hall wrote, "The City of Coquitlam provides support to groups to implement some amazing programmes and projects. The Hoy Creek Hatchery is a project of the Hoy/Scott Creek Watershed Society. The Hatchery is located in a public park for all to learn about and witness the raising of salmon through many stages until they are ready for release. All work is done by volunteers under the guidance of the Watershed Society and the City. Water monitoring is constant to assure water quality is ongoing. As important as the Hatchery is to maintain fish populations, just as important are the learning opportunities and the human relationships that are fostered. The waterways are such an important part of natural heritage and their health is vital to environmental protection. One of Coquitlam's slogans is "Fun is in our Nature" and the Hoy Creek Hatchery provides fun for many while they work to preserve and protect nature."

"Communities in Bloom is about greening through environmental, natural heritage conservation and horticultural actions that involve citizens, businesses, institutions, and municipalities. The program is focused on environmental stewardship through the enhancement of green spaces.

A Tri-City News article stated, "Coquitlam took the prestigious '5 Blooms - gold' accolade in the Grand Champions category, with a special shout-out for the Hoy Creek Hatchery that it runs with the Hoy/Scott Creek Watershed Society."

Realtime Water Monitoring Set-up at Hoy Creek

Thanks to the City of Coquitlam, on February 10, Flowlink Environmental set up a water monitoring system on Hoy Creek near the hatchery.

Flowlink had already been working with Hoy/Scott Watershed Society since the beginning of 2021 providing manual weekly testing, but this new setup provides real-time monitoring and an alert system.

"We're really excited about this new arrangement and hope it will lead to swift results in identifying pollutants and hopefully polluters, resulting in a safer environment for our salmon at the hatchery as well as in the stream," said society president, Robbin Whachell.

Over the years, the hatchery has had several fish kills in the stream as well as a major fish kill in the hatchery.


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Steve of Flowlink on his first bi-weekly visit by the company to ensure all equipment is operating accurately.

Water Quality Monitoring Underway at Hoy Creek

Kim Mayes, a volunteer, and director of the Society is leading up this project. She also provided the overview below.

Earlier this year the Hoy/Scott Watershed Society was approached by both Flowlink Environmental and the DFO to see if we were interested in capturing some basic water quality data in order to establish baseline water quality for Hoy Creek. This is something we had already been considering as stewards of Hoy Creek, so jumped on the opportunity to partner with Flowlink and start collecting.

Three sites were chosen along Hoy Creek to begin manually collecting in-situ data, with the support of Flowlink volunteers, who visit the creek weekly to test for and record the following:

  • Water Temperature

  • pH

  • Turbidity

  • Conductivity

At the time of testing, the current weather conditions are also recorded for reference. This is useful for helping us evaluate how seasonal trends influence the water quality parameters.

At two other locations along Hoy Creek, and with the support of the Departments of Fisheries and Ocean’s (DFO’s) Pacific Science Enterprise Center (PSEC) and their Community Steam Monitoring Project (CoSMo), we have now installed two temperature data loggers as well. This will help us record the data much more frequently (logs hourly), as well as more efficiently. The data loggers can store up to 5 years of data at a time and have a battery life of about 1 ½ years, so require little maintenance. Our aim is to collect the data 2-3 times per year (and when water levels of the creek permit), by removing from their current hidden locations and downloading the data via Bluetooth to a smartphone app. From there the data can be emailed to the DFO for analysis, as well as sharing with other nearby stream keepers.

We have plans to set up a more comprehensive Water Quality Monitoring Program in the near future, which will also include sampling and testing for the following, ideally on a monthly basis.

  • Alkalinity

  • Anions scan (nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, sulfate, chloride, fluoride, etc.)

  • Ammonia

  • E.coli

  • Total metals (full suite)

  • Dissolved oxygen

The overall goals for the program are to be able to identify emerging key water quality issues, allow us to be proactive in identifying spills/contamination sources, as well as raise public awareness, facilitate participation and education of our member volunteers.

We thank both Flowlink and CoSMo for supporting us with this work this far. However, in order to carry out our program initiatives indefinitely, we rely on the support of our volunteer members, and cannot do the important work we do without them.

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