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Salt Spring Island Water Preservation Society

Since 1982 the SSI Water Preservation Society (WPS) has helped protect our island's watersheds.  We believe that the best way to protect both the quantity and quality of our freshwater is  by having healthy lakes, creeks and watersheds and that these are also essential to protecting the natural environment, quality of life and economy of our island.

Salt Spring’s drinking water is a precious resource, limited in supply to only what falls each year as rain and snow.  It is naturally stored and accessible at the surface in lakes, springs and creeks, and below surface as groundwater.   Drinking water from lakes is periodically threatened by blooms of toxin-producing cyanobacteria.

In support of its outlined goals the WPS owns and manages 272 protected forested acres in our St. Mary Lake Watershed Nature Reserve and 20 acres in the Maxwell Lake watershed.  We own 20 acres and hold strict legal agreements protecting another 13½ acres of wetlands and forest on the Larmour lands, Beddis Road.  

 The WPS sponsors community/citizen science research to: catalogue island freshwater sources, improve our understanding of water quantity variability, determine how to protect water quantity and quality and prevent toxic algae blooms on our lakes.