John Anderson, owner of the 101 year old Harris Farm located immediately below New Denver Flats, spoke to the protestors shortly after the arrests, and thanked them for standing with him. A transcript of John's speech follows below:

"This ranch has been in my wife's family for 101 years this summer. And water is vital to us, not only our tap water but water for irrigation, for our cattle and our other animals, and our gardens and our hayfields.

First I want to thank everybody who's come here today to stand with us to try to protect our watershed and particularly those people who have come from so far. It shows that you care and you have great courage to come here and stand with us. It's sad to think that it has finally come to this. I never thought in my wildest imagination I'd ever have to stand on a line like this. And it's sad that our government has just failed to listen to us and failed to help us. It's sad that they are now pitting family members, neighbours and friends against one another. This is a very sad state of affairs for our valley.

Our quarrel is not with the loggers. The loggers want steady jobs and they want clean tap water for their children and for their families. But overcutting our forests as we have been doing and modernizing our mills with tax dollars; with grants through tax dollars from loggers and from other taxpayers in British Columbia, they upgrade their mills. So, between overcutting and upgrading mills there's very little hope for sustained forests or for sustained jobs.

Our quarrel is with the government, with our premier and with our MLA. It's sad to think that both villages of Silverton and New Denver and the representative of our Regional District for Central Kootenay for this area area H (and from a recent Angus Reid poll over 90% of the people in this valley) are all opposed to watershed logging. And I stress watershed logging. It's a sad state of affairs.

The government has really let us down; just like the fishers up north, they are forced to take these kinds of actions because our governments are not doing it for us. They don't listen to us, they don't listen to the councils, the local government or the people of this valley. They don't listen and they don't care. We're all British Columbians - we all pay taxes. Is it a crime to want clean tap water?

All of you people here today have shown real courage, real strength - much more than our politicians are able to do. So I thank you all for coming. And there's a lot of pent up anger and emotion, a lot of pent up tears in this crowd and I thank you for being so quiet and so dignified. And I think that's about all I got to say, thanks a lot."