| Abstract/Description or Keywords |
This health risk assessment is required by the Interior Health Authority and it broadly follows Modules 1, 2, 7 and 8 of the draft Comprehensive Drinking Water Source to Tap Assessment Guidelines. The overall objectives of the assessment were to characterize and delineate the watershed area, identify current and/or future drinking water hazards and vulnerabilities, characterize the risk posed by each hazard and provide recommendations to reduce the overall impacts on source water. The Oyama and Vernon Creek watersheds together encompass approximately 141.1 km2. They are located east of the DLC and expand across four biogeoclimatic zones. Together, the two community watersheds supply the DLC with approximately 80% of their source water. Both watersheds are dependent on upland storage reservoirs that rely on snow pack for annual water regeneration and supply needs. The assessment characterized all hazards (both intrinsic and anthropogenically influenced) that have the potential of effecting surface water quantity and quality. Hazards identified in the assessment were generally categorized into three different hazard types: biological, chemical or physical. The risk of most hazards is very much dependent on where a hazard occurs within the watershed. Therefore, the assessment area was divided into very high, high, moderate and low vulnerability zones and the risk of the hazards were evaluated individually for the different vulnerability zones (to simplify the analysis, very high and high were treated as one). watershed management, watershed assessment, water quality, forest harvest, water quality, water supply |
