Google Translate
Translation – Explanation and Caution

The electronic translation service on the City of Surrey’s web site is hosted by Google Translate. The quality of the translation may vary in some of the languages offered by Google. The goal of the basic translation is to capture the general intention of the original English material.

Google Translate is a free service and currently offers translation in over 50 languages. Unfortunately, not all the languages spoken in the City of Surrey are translated. Punjabi is one of the languages not currently offered, and to remedy the situation, the City has been in contact with Google and they have committed to making Punjabi available in the future.

The City of Surrey cannot guarantee the quality, accuracy, or completeness of any translated information. Before you act on translated information, the City encourages you to confirm any facts that are important to you and the decisions you make.

The City of Surrey offers interpretation services at all its facilities. If you have a question about the material you read on our web site, we encourage you to stop by a City facilities to discuss it. You can also contact the City at (604) 591-4011 to receive interpretation support.

The City is committed to enhancing the accessibility of its web site to all its citizens, and appreciates any feedback that it receives.

Chinese, Korean, Punjabi, Tagalog, Hindi

Benthic Invertebrates

 

Since 1999, the City has been conducting regular benthic invertebrate sampling in the spring and fall of each year on many local streams. This type of study is a great tool to help determine both the overall stream health and to monitor the changes in health of the stream from one year due to natural and human induced changes in the catchment.

Benthic invertebrates are tiny organisms found living on the bottom of water bodies. Over 95% of all animal species are classed as invertebrates - or animals without backbones. Some examples are flies, slugs, leeches, beetles, bugs, worms, and crayfish.     

These organisms are good indicators of stream health because they:

  • Live in the water for all or most of their life cycle
  • Stay in areas suitable for their survival
  • Differ in their tolerance to types/amounts of pollution, steam flow changes and changes in background water quality
  • Often live for more than one year allowing temporal patterns to be observed

By examining both the presence and absence of these organisms both at any particular sampling event and over time, the City is able to determine a number of indices that can be weighted to provide insight into the health of the upstream watershed; covering both natural and human induced changes/impacts either positive or negative.

Since the City started this monitoring program in the Spring of 1999 with 12 sites, the program has expanded to collect data at 24 monitoring locations representing the vast majority of the City’s creeks and streams.  View the map for detailed site locations.

The data from these studies is available via contacting Engineering - Drainage and Environment at the 604-592-6936.