Scare tactics’ used to approve gravel mining, say critics
By Robert Freeman - Chilliwack Progress - April 24, 2008 | | | |
Fraser Valley politicians are using scare tactics to open the door to an unprecedented “gravel grab” in the Fraser River under the guise of flood protection, says Dr. Marvin Rosenau.
And the Fraser Valley Salmon Society, along with the BC Wildlife Federation, the David Suzuki Foundation and other environmental groups, is calling for an open forum so the public can hear both sides of the issue.
FVSS president Frank Kwak said it’s hoped a forum will arouse a public outcry similar to the one that caused Environment Minister Barry Penner to back off approving a run-of-the-river project on the Pitt River earlier this month.
“We think we have good evidence that flood protection is not involved here,” Kwak said. “But where it is, we want to support it.”
Rosenau, a former provincial fisheries biologist, cited studies done by UBC and SFU river engineers that suggest gravel removal won’t significantly reduce flood risks in the Fraser River reach between Hope and Mission.
“A lot of fish habitat is being destroyed,” he said, without a clear-cut reduction in flood risk.
The nearly 400,000 cubic metres of gravel removed recently from Spring Bar will drop the river level by, at most, six inches, he said, contrary to statements made by Chilliwack MLAs John Les and Barry Penner.
“This is a political agenda to provide local aggregate companies with gravel,” Rosenau said, to supply the Lower Mainland’s “overheated” development market.
Les agreed in an earlier interview that one removal would not lead to a significant reduction in the river level, but a long-term program would.
But Rosenau said studies show that even removing 4.2 million cubic metres of gravel would result in an overall reduction of less than four inches.
“The river’s not rapidly filling up with gravel” as claimed, he said, because the reach is “so wide, the input in gravel deposits is pretty trivial.”
The B.C. government waived the royalty fees normally charged contractors, and provided $564,000 to the Seabird Island First Nation, the only bidder on the project, to build a bridge to the removal site on Spring Bar.
The use of public money, without any funds collected through royalty fees for mitigation of lost fish habitat, angered society member Nick Basock.
“I don’t know how people can sit around and take that,” he said.
River guide and entrepreneur Dean Werk commended the efforts of the society to keep the gravel removal issue before the public and to reign in the politicians.
“This is a disgrace to us and to all the general public of the Lower Mainland,” he said. “I really hope we can get a public forum ... so they all can understand what’s going on.”
Past FVSS president Sandy Ritchie said gravel has been taken out of the river since 1880.
“I would like to see a public forum,” he said, but pointed out that Chilliwack was “built from river gravel and most of the dikes were built with river gravel.”
“This Spring Bar thing ain’t anything new,” he said.
However, Kwak said if the FVSS had not pushed for changes to the bridge at Spring Bar this year “we would have had dewatering in the same fashion as 2006.”
Millions of pink salmon eggs were lost at Big Bar that year when a causeway was built instead of a bridge to give trucks access to the site. The causeway blocked the river water flowing over the nesting sites.
Kwak and Rosenau also said federal fisheries did not do the required assessment of the impact of the gravel removal at Spring Bar, despite the department’s own report following the Big Bar incident.
Rosenau said 10 hectares of prime juvenile Chinook rearing habitat was destroyed by the Spring Bar removal, as well as other species known to use the habitat for rearing, including stream-rearing sockeye.
rfreeman@theprogress.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Topic: "There are safer places to get gravel" (Read 144335 times)