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David Gentles*
Vol.8 • Issue 72
Homesharing redefines family See Page 5
Bowling alley’s days numbered See Page 3
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Prince becomes a pauper
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Marot Sammartino (right) plays an Egyptian beggar who trades places with King Tut in the Kootenay Home Educators production of Tut Tut. He’s seen here with the royal tutor played by Madelyn Wiedrick (right). Meanwhile the displaced royal struggles to survive on the streets. The musical production is directed by Kait Tait and runs this week at Covenant Church on Stanley St. It will play tonight at 6 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 p.m. See more photos on page 2. Will Johnson photo
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Aquamarine
Blewett residents question bottled water extraction BILL METCALFE
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Nelson Star
A Blewett group wonders if there is enough water in the aquifer underlying the community to support a bottled water plant and meet the community’s domestic water needs. The Blewett Conservation Society has launched a petition addressed to the BC legislature, requesting the government take action to protect domestic water supplies from private enterprises and carry out a water sustainability plan for the community in accordance with BC’s new Water Act. The group’s immediate concern is Okinshaw Water Ltd., which runs a bottled water plant on Shasheen Road in Blewett. But their concerns go beyond one specific company, according to the society’s K.L. Kivi. “It doesn’t matter who functions in
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our domestic watersheds — forestry, mining, recreation, agriculture, industry — we want to ensure the quantity and quality of water in our human community and our ecological community, for now and into the future,” she said. “If independent third party studies and ongoing monitoring confirm that taking water from our shared Blewett aquifer for bottling purposes is sustainable alongside domestic or environmental flows, then we will accept that.” To prove an aquifer is sustainable, a hydrogeologist would have to create a water budget for the aquifer, according to Dr. Gilles Wendling, a consulting hydrogeologist in Nanaimo. “You need to calculate how much goes into the aquifer and how much is used,” he told the Star. “Aquifers are connected to surface water, and groundwater always moves, recharging and
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discharging.” He said you would have to look at the output: where the aquifer discharges. For example, if it discharges into a river, it may be crucial to the flow of that river, so “even if the aquifer is huge, it might already be allocated, to supply the river.” He said this would require complex studies because not much is known about most aquifers in Canada. “Existing data is mediocre,” he said. “In Europe they have hundreds of years of good information. In Canada, some have been researched, but the majority are not well understood, characterized or monitored. We are still in the middle ages in terms of understanding groundwater.”
Okinshaw’s production Okinshaw Water, according to owner
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Wayne Rutherford, is “a very small company,” currently producing 30 to 50 18-litre bottles of its branded Riva Water per month as well as about 8,000 500-millilitre bottles that it markets in BC to grocery stores and gas stations. He said the company no longer produces the Canadian Ice brand promoted on Okinshaw’s website. Rutherford said the company bottles Riva Water and markets it as unique in its health benefits because of its naturally high alkalinity. “We want to bring high quality water to the Canadian health industry,” he said. “Disease cannot survive in an alkaline environment. That is the only reason we got into this business.” He said the company attempted to market its product to Asia in 2015 but
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