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While the Maritimes suffered through a long drought this year, Sable Island didn’t have the same problem.
That is because the island located 290 kilometres southeast of Halifax has a large underground supply of fresh water.
“Imagine a giant, upside down dome of fresh water that is floating on top of the denser salty water in the ocean,” Audrey Levesque, a Parks Canada visitor experience co-ordinator on Sable Island, told Information Morning this week.
“The sand under the island is fully permeable, so it acts like a massive sponge.”
Levesque says the island receives a bit more rain and snow than the Halifax area on a regular basis and the water goes underground almost instantly, which is why the island does not have streams.
Over time, this fresh water forms a thick layer of groundwater that can be as deep as 30 metres, with some studies suggesting it can be more than that.
“You need to picture this soft, rounded amount of water under the island, highest in the middle and gradually thinning toward the beaches,” Levesque said.
Levesque said it isn’t unique to Sable Island. This happens on many islands and areas with coastal terrain where large amounts of water get trapped in wet sand.
The phenomenon means wildlife on Sable Island have access to 21 permanent ponds and water that is available year-round.
But the island’s famed horses have also begun digging for their own water supply, Levesque says.
“In places where water is not accessible in ponds, they are digging wells into the sand,” she says.
For the few people who are on the island, they have a well that supplies their own fresh water. This water supply, Levesque says, is better than the water mainlanders consume.
“You don’t bring water, we will provide it,” she said. “And it’s going to taste so much better.”
While the rest of Nova Scotia struggled with crops and well drying up, Sable Island didn’t have that issue despite a dry spring.
“We were in the normal of our rainfall,” Levesque said. “We did check the water level in the well. We were monitoring it, but it never reached a threshold of being worried.”
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