💧 Water

In design · priority

The binding constraint — and the first thing we design. One creek decides how many of us the land can hold.

Why water comes first

Everything else negotiates; water doesn't. A 4 km creek through one parcel is a gift, but it is also the hard ceiling on population. Before we promise 500 homes, we have to answer one question honestly: how much water can we lawfully and sustainably take, year-round, including the dry tail of August? Lot count follows water — not the other way around.

The water licence is the real document

In British Columbia, surface water is owned by the Crown and used under a water licence. The parcel's licence — its volume, priority date, and permitted purpose (domestic vs. waterworks vs. power) — is the single most important thing we're confirming with the seller. A licence sized for a ranch is not a licence sized for a village. Where the existing licence falls short, we either size the community to it or apply to amend it. No hand-waving here.

Gravity is our friend

Mountain land means we can likely run a gravity-fed system — an intake high on the creek, storage tanks uphill of the homesites, and pressure delivered by elevation instead of pumps (which means no power bill to move water, and water that keeps flowing in an outage). GeoSeal's elevation data lets us map which cells sit below a viable intake — a real input to where homes go.

Treatment, storage, and the dry months

Surface water needs treatment — at minimum filtration + UV for potable use. We size storage for the late-summer low and for fire. And we stretch the licence with rooftop catchment and cistern storage per cell, plus greywater reuse for gardens and the greenhouse, so drinking-quality water isn't spent on irrigation.

What you'll be able to do here

Site your cell and see its pressure zone and catchment; declare your household's water need; and watch the commons-wide demand add up against the licence — so the community can see its own ceiling and design within it, together.

Open question for the foresters and water folk among us: is the creek's summer low flow the binding limit, and does the licence permit power use as well as domestic? Those two answers reshape everything downstream — including micro-hydro.

Connected systems

• 💦 Micro-hydro — Run-of-creek power from the 4 km drop — potentially the steady baseload the whole commons runs on. Let's explore it properly.
• 🗺️ Land & Lots — How 2,560 acres becomes 500 surveyed 3-acre cells and a vast permanent commons — cut by buildable envelope, not by ruler.
• 🌱 Food & Growing — Year-round growing in a mountain climate — a walipíni, root cellars, a food forest, and the bees we already track.

Claim a founding share →   ← All systems