Chilliwack Progress
Gravel critics asked to leave Fraser gravel bar
Text By Robert Freeman - Chilliwack Progress
Published: March 02, 2009 6:00 PM
Members of the Fraser River Gravel Stewardship Committee and a Progress reporter were escorted off the site of a mining operation winding down at the Harrison gravel bar Friday.
The committee members wanted to talk to the environmental monitor, but he was apparently not on site - as required by the removal permit - or chose not to make himself available.
Frank Kwak, president of the Fraser River Salmon Society, said there were no signs or flag persons preventing public access to the site, and the lone security guard had no identification or phone numbers to call company officials or to speak with the monitor.
“When we were ordered off the gravel bar, or she’d call the RCMP, there were no signs, no flagmen, nothing to indicate we weren’t able to be there,” he said.
John Dyck, spokesman for the contractor, said he was unhappy the site was not secured because the company was still liable for public safety, even though the project is winding down.
“I don’t like the fact you were actually able to access the site,” he said. “We’re paying people to prevent that.”
But safety, not secrecy, is the reason behind requiring visits to the site to be pre-arranged, he added.
“We’re not trying to hide anything,” he said, and committee members should have known they needed to call before visiting the site.
Although Dyck agreed the environmental monitor “should have been” at the site, he backed up the actions of security staff because of an earlier incident involving members of the committee.
Kwak agreed some members had perhaps crossed the line earlier by going onto a bridge to a removal site without permission, “but I’m not that radical, not by a long shot.”
He agreed public safety was a “legitimate” reason to restrict access, but there was no work going on at the site Friday, and nothing to prevent anyone from going onto the gravel bar - until a woman with a security jacket but no other identification ordered the group off the property.
The committee, a coalition of environmental groups, has long been at loggerheads with the B.C. government and federal fisheries over the lack of “transparency” in the approval process to remove gravel from the Fraser River.
A public forum is being held March 19 at the Chilliwack Best Western to present the committee’s case for a more open approval process.
rfreeman@theprogress.com
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Topic: "There are safer places to get gravel" (Read 144263 times)