Had to Rush back from the fishing trip today as we had a gravel meeting at my place this afternoon. Also a reporter from the3 Chilliwack Progress came to do a story. As much as government would like us to do we are not going away. Posts an article from an out of town paper. They had the wrong date of thew Big Bar fish Kill, it was 2006.
Terrace Standard
Sand and Gravel Sequel
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Text By Rob Brown - Terrace Standard
Published: July 07, 2009 11:00 PM
0 Comments EACH YEAR the equivalent of 15,000 to 63,000 dump truck loads of gravel is washed down the Fraser River and deposited between Hope and Mission, declares the BC Government website. “As a result, huge gravel deposits have formed over time, increasing the flood risk for the millions of people who live and work in the Fraser Valley – the Province is removing some of this gravel to reduce this threat to public safety.”
The site goes on to state that, “the Province is working directly with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial Ministry of Environment to ensure any gravel extraction is done based on a sound scientific approach - one that protects this sensitive environment while balancing the need to protect public safety.”
Oh yeah, well let’s look under the surface of this bit of spun bullwool to see what’s really going down. First, the Fraser doesn’t threaten millions of people living in the Fraser Valley. It threatens the property of a very, very small percentage of the population who were foolishly allowed to build upon the most flood prone part of the Fraser’s flood plain, and then only in high water years. Second, there is no proof that the river’s annual gravel accretion exacerbates flooding.
Last spring a construction company built a road across the Fraser’s main channel in order to gain access to an alluvial island called Big Bar. Since it was perpendicular to the bank, the causeway acted like a dam, the end result was that over two and a half million incubating pink salmon perished. To make matters worse, last year’s pink salmon run was greatly reduced coast wide. Remember too, that when you wipe out pink salmon, you wreak havoc on everything in the environment that depends on humpy abundance.
Wait. Wasn’t this mining supposed to be done under the watchful eye of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans? They are charged with the protection of fishes and the places they live? After more than 30 years of DFO watching, I can assure you that the last people to whom you want to entrust the welfare of fish is DFO.
Local politicians, famously, former Chilliwack mayor and prominent provincial liberal, John Les claimed that DFO put the welfare of fish before the welfare of his constituents. In response, DFO Regional Director John C. Davis wrote to Deputy Minister Larry Murray, that “local municipalities (Chilliwack, Kent and Abbotsford) are adamant that gravel removal is a critical step in the management of flood levels. There is, however, a general lack of analyses/information that demonstrates that gravel removal has or will reduce flood hazard by lowering the dyke profile.” [Emphasis added]. This internal memo notwithstanding, the mining of Big Bar went ahead, which suggests that some considerable political pressure was applied during the process of approval. One more example of DFO putting the needs of industry before those of fish and their environs. And apparently the federal auditor-general agrees with me.
In May, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development on behalf of the auditor-general tabled a scathing report on DFO’s efforts to protect fish habitat, giving them what amounts to a big bold F in monitoring, enforcement and accountability, and citing Fraser River gravel removal as proof.
The report also upheld the opinion of conservation groups about the removal of gravel in the lower Fraser River, saying it has killed millions of juvenile fish and failed to meet the province’s stated objective of reducing flood risk. Otto Langer, a well respected biologist who once worked with DFO, was right on the money when he said heads should have rolled over the gravel fiasco, but none will. In the wake of the report, DFO has promised a three year plan to rectify its shabby managerial practices with regular updates to the commissioner.
In the good old days there were plenty of pits to mine gravel. Now with increasing urbanization and the Agricultural Land Reserve tying up valuable gravel reserves, industry needs to tap new sources, including the round, smooth river rock of the Fraser River between Mission and Hope. Completing the RAV line alone will require 400,000 tonnes of aggregate. It’s a win/win for the liberals: a creator of jobs, a windfall for private contractors. Sadly, aggregate mining will be a huge loss for our rivers and ultimately for the environment. But what the hell, the half baked reasoning so prevalent nowadays goes, there are hardly any fish in those rivers anyway.
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Topic: The Gravel Removal Issue Is Still Hot (Read 1216 times)