The long-standing coordinator of the Salt Spring Water Council has announced his resignation from the group effective the end of October.

Murray Reiss said he chose to step down after considerable thought over the past several weeks. Reiss, the winner of a Canada Council grant earlier this year, said he intends to complete a book of poems.

“I’ve come to realize that the only way I’m going to do that is if it’s all I’m doing,” he said.

He commended council members’ expertise, sense of engagement and spirit of volunteerism.

“This has been an extremely interesting group to work with,” Reiss said during his final council session on Friday. “It’s consistently impressed me and has served as a paradigm of Salt Spring Island.”

Water Council funders, notably the Capital Regional District, Islands Trust and North Salt Spring Waterworks District, will set out to consider hiring a new coordinator as soon as possible.

“This is one of those things that makes the island work,” he said. “I hope it continues.”

Reiss’ resignation comes at a time when the Water Council seeks to re-establish links with the CRD, the provincial government and the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

Reiss said provincial government funding cuts and the absence of Salt Spring’s CRD director Garth Hendren may account for sagging representation at the Water Council’s bimonthly meetings.

“If the regional director is not present, it sends the message that this is not a priority,” Reiss said. “His presence might help influence other agencies’ participation.”

The Water Council offers a forum for representatives of Salt Spring’s water utility providers and local government officials to discuss issues of water quality and supply on the island.

The council’s next meeting takes place at Lions Hall on Nov. 27 at 10 a.m.

In other Water Council news:

Members unanimously supported an initiative to raise public awareness of the CRD’s growing role among the island’s water districts.

“The CRD’s strategy of acquiring and merging Salt Spring Island water systems is ongoing and has enabled important changes in the cost, value and accountability of water systems,” Fulford resident John Rowlandson wrote in his proposal to Water Council members.

“While significant, the benefits and impacts of these changes are poorly understood and the shift in water system stewardship rarely discussed.”

Beginning later this fall, representatives from CRD-controlled water districts will speak about how amalgamation has impacted services in their districts for the better and for the worse.

The CRD’s environmental services branch operates six water systems on Salt Spring Island: Beddis, Cedar Lane, Cedars of Tuam, Fernwood, Fulford and Highland water services

“Being able to look at these six systems would produce a framework for an ongoing dialogue and provide a snapshot of where we are at,” Rowlandson said.