If you don't know what you have, how can you prove it has changed? It is good science, and good stewardship of the land and water, to ensure that a comprehensive archive of baseline environmental data is compiled before anyone makes significant changes.

In the context of coalbed methane, which has unavoidably enormous impacts within watershed and local hydrologies, it would be irresponsible to proceed without baseline data collection and a full understanding of local hydrological systems - lakes, ponds, and particularly streams, as well as mapping of groundwater and aquifers.

In fact, in a 2004 report commissioned by the then Ministry of Energy and Mines, Summit Environmental Consultants stated that

“There is ... little data from low-order streams .... This is potentially a critical information gap and baseline water quality monitoring will very likely be needed for at least three years before CBG development.”

Three recent reports about groundwater and salmon

Review of Groundwater Salmon Interactions in British Columbia

Goundwater is an important and often essential part of wild salmonid habitat. Yet, groundwater use is almost entirely unregulated in British Columbia, groundwater management rarely considers wild salmon, and British Columbia’s water policy focuses mainly on surface water.

Prepared by Tanis Douglas for Watershed Watch, November 2006

Speaking for the Salmon 

Water is essential to salmon. Yet water is also undervalued and generally threatened by weak or non-existent legislation and a myriad of human activities (including climate change). While BC’s “Water Use Planning” process is a step in the right direction in recognizing and affirming water’s value to fish, BC’s Water Act is antiquated in its recognition and protection of fisheries values. Nor does the Water Act adequately protect BC groundwater resources, the value of which can only increase.

This omission is a serious oversight. Groundwater is increasingly under threat from development and climate change. Groundwater is also increasingly recognized for its vital role in the ecology of salmon—and in the proper functioning of ecosystems in general.

Proceedings edited by Stan Proboszcz and Craig Orr for Watershed Watch, March 2007 

Review of British Columbia’s Groundwater Regulatory Regime:
Current Practices and Options

British Columbia has one of the least developed groundwater regulation regimes in North
America.

The absence of a comprehensive regulatory approach has significant consequences for fish. The
interconnection between groundwater and surface water bodies supporting fish habitat has long
be recognized by hydrologists and addressing the interconnection is increasingly a standard
regulatory feature in many jurisdictions1. In British Columbia however, proposed groundwater
exploration and extraction is largely unassessed and unregulated. In other words, provincial
officials have no way of even assessing the full extent of groundwater usage, let alone regulating
groundwater use to mitigate environmental impacts. Our examination of other legislation
governing water use and fish does not reveal any alternate means of addressing the impacts of
groundwater usage.

Prepared by Randy Christenson for Watershed Watch, February 2007 

What is Coalbed Methane?

Coal miners (and canaries) fear it because it is deadly and highly explosive. In the last twenty years, coalbed methane has gone from obscurity as an energy resource, to supplying 8% of the total US natural gas production. Along the way, it has generated a lot of public controversy, and its production has wreaked havoc on many American landscapes.

Coalbed methane is present wherever there are coalfields. It is held in the coal (“adsorbed”) by the enormous pressure of water over the coalbeds. When the water is removed, the pressure is reduced, and the coalbed gas “desorbs” from the coal and is able to come to the surface.

It is the same as natural gas – mostly methane. It is one of the cleaner burning fossil fuels, but producing it is one of the dirtiest resource extraction practices, putting local landscapes and hydrologies at risk of permanent destruction.