[1] The CRD's ownership and complete control of its entire watershed assures its customers of a supply that is secure in both quantity and quality.

Lieutenants Warre and Vavason of the Royal Engineers noted on their inspection of the place in 1845: "This fort has lately been established; it is badly situated with regard to water and position, which latter has been chosen for its agricultural advantages only.

[6] By the late 1850s, especially with Victoria's growth as a port in response to the gold rushes on the Fraser River in 1858 and in the Cariboo in 1861, transport of water by wagon was becoming impractical.

[7] In 1863, entrepreneurs John Coe and Thomas Martin undertook to dig a shaft at the spring that greatly increased the flow of water.

At one point the Water Commissioner, Charles Henry Rust, noticed an unusually heavy usage at the Empress Hotel.

The city brought in a consulting engineer from San Francisco, Arthur L. Adams, to study the problem and recommend solutions.

[19] It was, however, not until November 1910 that council finally passed the bylaw authorizing the development of Sooke Lake as a source of water supply.

Initially, the resident engineer was Harry Hartwell, but he was replaced in July 1912 by Boyd Ehle[22] from Sanderson & Porter's New York Office.

[23] The firm established an office in Victoria in the Drake Block at 1414 Douglas St. Aside from acquiring ownership of the lake and surrounding watershed, Meredith's plan involved constructing a flowline of 27.5 miles (44.3 km) from a dam at Sooke Lake to a holding reservoir to be constructed at the Humpback Road near Goldstream.

From there a pipeline would run about 10.5 miles (16.9 km) through the Helmcken Fields and along Burnside Road to a distribution point in the city at Fountain Square.

[6][24] The initial contract for the construction work was awarded to Solomon Cameron and Parker Clarke of the Westholme Lumber Co. in December, 1911.

The consulting engineer recommended that the neighboring Leech River watershed also be acquired and connected to Sooke Lake by a 5-mile (8 km) conduit, but this was not undertaken at the time.

The concrete dam at Sooke Lake raised the water level 12 ft (3.7 m), expanding the surface area from 978 to 1,180 acres (396 to 478 hectares) and creating an available storage capacity of 3.355 billion imperial gallons (15,240,000 m3).

The balancing reservoir at Humpback was created by building a concrete dam to a height of 31 feet (9.4 m), closing off a sloping valley that would fill with the water piped down from Sooke Lake.

The greatest engineering challenge was to build the flow line of concrete pipe from Sooke Lake to Humpback.

The laying of the flowline involved building a small gauge railway on the grade from the pipe factory to Sooke Lake and to Humpback.

Sections of pipe were loaded on cars, 22 at a haul, and pulled by a small engine up to the end of the line where they were placed into position.

The project was completed in May 1915 with the official opening ceremony held at Sooke Dam on the 28th of that month, Mayor Alexander Stewart presiding.

The on-site engineering team included Ivar Hallen, Frederick Sealy, John Krog, Philip Fox, and Charles Pollock.

In 1925 the city expropriated the Esquimalt Waterworks Company, thus acquiring Goldstream Lake and about 10 square miles (25.90 km2) of additional watershed as well as facilities at Japan Gulch.

Aside from limitations of capacity, the old pipeline was leaking significantly, with fully a third of the water that entered it at Sooke Dam being lost through its 36,000 joints before reaching Humpback.

The possibility of a tunnel had already been broached by the engineering consultant Arthur L. Adams in 1905,[30] and again in 1907,[31] but was discouraged by council's concern about cost as well as threatened legal action by the Esquimalt Water Works Co., which had a prior claim to the Goldstream watershed.

In 1995, 100 people became ill when water from the Humpback reservoir, which was still in service, became contaminated with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which causes toxoplasmosis, from the feces of feral cats.

As a result of this, Humpback Reservoir was shut down for good and construction was begun on a disinfection plant at Japan Gulch that would use ultraviolet light to neutralize micro-organisms not killed by chlorine.