Watershed Meeting

The issue of watershed protection is definitely a hot topic on the coast. The Roberts Creek Community Hall filled Wednesday night to hear how such a precious commodity as our drinking water is now finds itself at the mercy of logging companies here in BC. Anyone who has been reading the Coast Reporter for the past few months knows that the ravages of private land logging has once again made headlines with the stripping of trees around Wilson Creek and now the threat to Chapman Creek which is the water source for 26,000 people. While the main thrust of the evening was how to protect the Chapman Creek watershed, people from all coastal districts wanted to know how we have found ourselves in this mess and what can be done about it.

Lee Ann Johnson, emcee; Hans Penner, Concerned Citizens of the S.C.; Will Koop, BC Tap Water Alliance; Dr. Paul Martiquet, Vancouver Coastal Health Officer; Mayor Barry Janyk, Gibsons; Nicholas Simons, MLA Powell River - Sunshine Coast; Dan Bouman, Sunshine Coast Conservation Association (not shown)

A six member panel above attempted to supply us with the answers. We learned about the latest actions by citizens to block Western Forest Products from starting road construction to its public tenure cutblocks on the Chapman Creek Watershed and how such action opens them to a whole range of legal issues. Dr. Martiquet described the new Drinking Water Protection Act which he would like to see be put to the test by the Provincial Public Health Officer. Mayor Janyk explained the SCRD's role and how the possibility of suing the provincial government is a very real option. Nicolas Simons said he would do all he could (drawback: the legislature is in summer recess) but what is needed is a change in government. Dan Bouman illustrated what little power local governments have to protect watersheds while being held legally responsible to provide safe drinking water to its constituents. This is but a brief highlight of the meeting and the local paper will offer more.

For many of us, the history of how we are having to now fight for clean water was the most interesting part of the discussion and this was provided by Will Koop of the BC Tap Water Alliance. Koop has researched the history of BC's Watershed Reserves over the past ten years and explained how the Reserves were at one time completely off limits to all logging and how that protection has eroded since the 1950's through a collusion of successive provincial governments, forestry companies and forestry academics. FOE has purchased his book 'From Wisdom to Tyranny: A History of British Columbia's Drinking Watershed Reserves.' After picking up the book, we attempted to discover what category listing our Waugh Lake Watershed possessed from the list of watersheds at the back of the book. Waugh Lake was not on the list! We spoke to Koop at the end of the meeting to find out why and his only explanation is that the watershed though it has obviously been recognized as a watershed reserve may never have been 'officially' registered with the provincial government What the implications of this is we do not know but we intended to raise the issue at the SCRD Planning & Development Committee meeting the next day.