Residents fight to save fish

Construction work near Campbell Heights business park is likely to blame for the dropping water level in Latimer Lake.

by Matthew Claxton

A Langley family has been trying to rescue the fish from a Surrey Lake as it continues to shrink into puddles.

"The arm where we were pulling them out of is almost all mud now," said Julie Church, indicating one of the half-drained stretches of Latimer Lake.

The man-made lake, located off 28th Avenue close to the Langley-Surrey border, has been dwindling for more than a month.

"It's a crying shame, that is," Church's daughter Lea Tonin said.

Trout, perch and crayfish have been confined to muddy stretches of water as the lake divided into several pieces, separated by dry ridges.

Latimer has sunk by about two meters, and recent heavy rainfall has done little to fill it back up.

Church and Tonin have taken nets and buckets to the lake, scooping up the trout, perch, and crayfish and moving them from the shrinking puddles to the largest remaining pools.

But Church and Tonin both worry most of the fish will die before water levels rise. They say that although the lake is stocked, some fish have survived from year to year and laid eggs.

The drop has also hurt the lake bed, as cyclists and motorcycle riders have been able to drive right over now-dry areas.

Church has complained to the City of Surrey and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans about the situation.

Surrey is monitoring the level of the lake and the local water table on a daily basis, said utilities manager Vincent Lalonde.

The absolute cause of the decline is not certain, Lalonde said.

"It's certainly lower than we expected it to be," he said.

However, the drop may be related to nearby construction.

Surrey city work crews have been installing water and sewer mains and drainage ditches for future development of the nearby Campbell Heights business park.

The current development is being undertaken to service city-owned portions of the Heights, which are being developed with the city as a partner.

"We had to do some temporary de-watering along the road alignment," Lalonde said.

To install the pipes, crews installed temporary wells and pumped part of the local water table dry, sending the water to a nearby vacant field.

"It's kind of a local depression in the water table," said Lalonde.

This may have drawn some of the water away from Latimer Lake, which drains through seepage into the local water table.

The city will have an answer on the cause within a few weeks, Lalonde said. He noted if the construction is to blame, it will likely be a one-time event. The de-watering has already ceased.

"Those won't be repeated next year," he said about the construction projects.

The level of water is expected to rise over the winter, as rainfall refills the lake.

Langley Advance, October 12, 2004