Musquodoboit Harbour water project produces dry result as drought worsens

For years, The Old School Community Gathering Place Co-operative has been working to produce drinking water from an aquifer beneath Musquodoboit Harbour, N.S. 

In April, a grand opening was held for a solar-powered community well that tapped into the water supply, but no residents have been able to fill up since. 

"As it turned out, the draw on the well from one solar panel was not enough and so we had to get another one," said Karen Bradley, past chair of the non-profit co-operative's board.

"And that led to needing more inverters and more batteries and so on and so forth. So it just sort of grew all the way through the entire summer."

Bradley said the drilled well is expected to be operational in the spring. The building, which houses the pump, batteries and distribution tap, is not winterized. 

"It was never meant to be year-round. It's not community water in the sense that you would expect from a utility," she said. 

Bradley said when it's operating, community members will be able fill up personal bottles from spring to fall — particularly valuable when private wells run dry. 

'Extremely dry fall' 

Trevor Hadwen, with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, said there has been continued dryness in summer, and even more intense conditions in the fall. He said the province is experiencing moderate drought, but anticipates data will show severe conditions in November. 

"It's fairly abnormal to have these kinds of drought conditions in the fall period," said Hadwen.

Hadwen said higher-than-average temperatures have also contributed to drought. 

On Tuesday, Halifax Water introduced mandatory restrictions on some activities for customers who are supplied by the Lake Major reservoir.  

The Municipality of Barrington has also experienced several droughts since 2016. Plans for a desalination device, in partnership with a Quebec company, did not go ahead in the summer.  

Barret Kurylyk, an associate professor of civil engineering at Dalhousie University, said drought is becoming more common in Nova Scotia where 40 per cent of households rely on private wells.

"So it's something we have to be thinking about long term as a province, as municipalities and as homeowners," he said 

Kurylyk said the cost of piping water directly to homes causes resistance among residents in rural villages. 

"But one of the first steps can be just these centralized water units that don't distribute water to every household, but are just like a pump and fill station for or when you have times of drought and there's no water in your own well," he said. 

Bruce Manion, who lives in Ostrea Lake, said many residents were opposed to the cost of piped water found in previous studies commissioned by the Halifax Regional Municipality. He said some have also taken to social media to press the co-operative for answers on the well, which was funded by taxpayers. 

Thousands spent 

"I've deemed this project to be what I call a vanity project," said Manion. "They wanted to see this happen … But it's not necessarily good public policy." 

In 2021, the well project received $14,500 from Farm Credit Canada through the Crown corporation's AgriSpirit fund. It has also received $9,000 of municipal tax dollars that are collected through the area rate, according to Bradley. 

"I just wish that people in the community would be interested in participating in these processes and understanding some of the frustrations that we've all had in trying to bring this project to complete fruition for everybody's benefit," she said. 

Manion said that is something he has tried to do — without success — in order to help the project, which also promised water during extended power outages. 

"Our biggest time for power outages around here is winter," he said. "So the fact that, you know, part of this grandiose project was to provide water in emergency situations, it won't happen." 

The Old School Community Gathering Place Co-operative says on its website that its mission is to "foster a vibrant inclusive community" through "services that promote the health, well-being, and community spirit of all people in Musquodoboit Harbour and surrounding areas."

"The well was merely a proof-of-concept project. It was hardly a vanity project — anyone with any vanity would have given up during the battles with HRM and believe me, giving up would have made my life far better," Bradley said in a statement to CBC News on Friday.