NDP visiting Hullcar Valley to discuss water quality concerns

SPALLUMCHEEN – A North Okanagan community’s fight for clean drinking water has caught the attention of provincial politicians.

New Democrat MLAs George Heyman, Lana Popham and Scott Fraser will visit residents of the Hullcar Valley area and the Splatsin First Nation Tuesday, March 29 to discuss high nitrate levels in the region’s water supply.
 
“People in this area continue to be exposed to nitrate levels that are putting babies, the elderly, and anyone with a compromised immune system at serious risk,” Heyman, the NDP’s environment spokesperson says in a media release. “Christy Clark and her government have known about the problem for two years, but they have failed to take action. Instead, they stood by while nitrate levels rose. Today, nitrate levels are more than 30 per cent above the guideline for Canadian drinking water quality.”
 
Heyman will join Popham, the party’s agriculture spokesperson, and Fraser, spokesperson for Aboriginal relations and reconciliation, to speak with residents and water users.

The visit follows weeks of the NDP raising the issue in the legislature.
 
“We know that spraying liquid manure for fertilization can lead to dangerous levels of nitrates in water,” Popham says in the release. “If nitrogen loads in the manure exceed what can be absorbed by the crops, those nutrients have to go somewhere. Sandy soils can lead to manure infiltration into aquifers creating dangerous contamination levels.”

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