Speaker Series slidedeck – Ken Ashley, October 2024

October 2024 Speaker Night:  Cowichan CSI: Crisis Scene Investigation! Dr. Ken Ashley Reflects on the 2023 Cowichan River Fish Kill, and Where We Go from Here.

Presentation Slidedeck: Cowichan CSI-Ken Ashley slidedeck - Oct 21 2024 v 5 final

Presentation recording:  coming soon

About the Event: 

Ken Ashley accepts the traditional Speaker Night gift - a Cowichan toque - from Watershed Board members and E.D.

In July 2023, a local family swimming in the Cowichan River witnessed a terrible scene: hundreds of fish floating dead in the river. In the days that followed, biologists documented a devastating loss of aquatic life stretching for 10 km, estimated at over 100,000 fish. Months of collaborative research among many partners ensued to unravel what happened.

The Cowichan Watershed Board was honoured to kick off our Fall Speaker Series with Dr. Ken Ashley. Ken is highly respected as both a biologist and engineer, and he has been generously volunteering that unique blend of expertise to help community partners here understand what happened in the Cowichan River in 2023, and how to respond. He discussed how the natural environment (Cowichan River and watershed) interacted with the built environment (Town of Lake Cowichan wastewater treatment plant, and climate change) to cause the 2023 fish kill, and what can be done to create a sustainable eco-centric community in the future.

Ken Ashley takes questions at Speaker Night - Oct 2024

About the Speaker: Dr. Ken Ashley holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Zoology, and M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. in Engineering. He has spent his entire career and education trying to reconcile these opposing camps, and offer insights from this unique merger. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in the design, operation and effects of lake destratification and hypolimnetic aeration/oxygenation systems, lake and reservoir fertilization, and stream/river enrichment. Ken has expertise in monitoring the environmental effects of wastewater discharges from Vancouver’s wastewater treatment plants and municipal water withdrawals from several rivers.

Ken has been generously volunteering his time and invaluable expertise to help community partners understand and respond to the dire water quality situation that caused a massive fish die-off in the Quw’utsun River in 2023, and another in the S’amunu (Somenos) sub-basin in 2024. (Huy ch q’u Ken!)