It may seem amusing to some, but bubbles caused twice so far by soap being poured into the Adventure Centre's waterfall pond are causing concern for at least one local environmentalist.
Edith Tobe of the Squamish Watershed Society said she had serious concerns about the bubbles making their way into the nearby slough.
"The second time it happened, I was driving by the Adventure Centre and saw the bubbles, so I went inside to ask what was going on," she told The Chief. "The girls working there as hostesses did not know what to do, so they called the environmental coordinator, who then called district operations. It took about three hours for them to get to a valve to prevent the soap and bubbles from getting into the slough."
Brent Leigh, deputy administrator for the District of Squamish (DOS), said the centre does have protocols for dealing with such situations.
"The pond has two protocols for drainage," he said. "One of them is that surface water from the roof or rainwater is overflowed to the Mamquam Blind Channel.
"We have an alternate for the drainage into the sanitation system," he said. "Any time we test the water and it doesn't have a PH, which is not acceptable, then it would go into the sanitation system. When we have an incident like when somebody puts Joy [soap] into the pond then it is tested to find out the PH, and if it is going to be injurious to aquatic life then it goes into the sanitation system."
But Tobe is not convinced testing for PH would make a difference.
"If someone put arsenic into the water, the PH would be the same," she said. "in terms of toxicity, those tests wouldn't say much. Any phosphates or whatever was in the water will certainly affect the coho spawning in that channel."
Leigh said on both occasions the bubble-causing substance was dumped into the pond, the District responded immediately.
"On both occasions we have shut the pond down," he said. "Then we tested it to see if it needed to be drained to the sanitation system."
He said although it may seem funny to those who did it, it is not a laughing matter.
"After all the stewardship the DOS has committed to during the construction of the site, we are obviously not encouraging people to do this in the future," he said.
"We would certainly act to charge someone caught doing this. I think the perpetrators think it is a prank, but we take this very seriously. When we have to test the water and take it through the sanitary system it costs taxpayers money."
Tobe said she thinks the waterfall invites this kind of behaviour, and is ill-placed next to the channel.
"People should be aware those actions have consequences to the habitat and wildlife."
