Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance background information

The Organization:

The Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance (SVWA) was formed in 1981 to work for the protection of the consumptive use watersheds of the Slocan Valley. The main goal of SVWA is the protection of water quantity, quality and timing of flow in the watersheds of the Slocan Valley. Other goals are to apply ecosystem-based planning to the Valley; ensure more value is derived from each tree cut; and diversify the Valley's economy.

SVWA Principles:

• Water protection must be the first priority for planning & management activities in consumptive use watersheds.
• An effective risk/hazard analysis & the precautionary principle must be employed in assessing the potential impact of proposed development activities in consumptive use watersheds.
• Adequate ecologically responsible standards must be developed & applied uniformly to all consumptive use watersheds in the Valley.
• Water users must have a share in decision making for their watersheds.

SVWA Major Activities and Accomplishments:

• Organizing numerous workshops, presentations and three provincial conferences (1984, 1988, 1999) on water and sustainability issues;
• Establishment of Community Water Monitoring Program to provide baseline information on our creeks;
• Publication of a review of the scientific literature on the risks of logging in watersheds (Community Guide to the Forest);
• Participation in numerous government planning processes (Slocan Valley Plan 1981-84; Springer Creek IWMP 1986-1990; CORE Pilot Project & regional processes 1993-1995);
• Amassing technical information by sponsoring the preparation of consultant's reports;
• Meeting with government and industry to promote ecologically and socially responsible forest legislation, policy and practice.

What is happening now?

The Slocan Valley is probably the community in the province that is most studied and best prepared to deal with the conflict between logging and protection of watersheds. In the past 20+ years several very strong environmental groups have sprung up and they have succeeded in getting protection for a considerable amount of land in the valley. But the last stand has come. Logging companies have so overcut the side valleys that drain into the Slocan Valley that they are reduced to logging in the core of the Slocan Valley, where the majority of people live, near people's homes, up to stream banks, and in headwaters in the valley. An Angus Reid poll found that 97% of valley residents want planning to protect water. A professional hydrologist and other experts have concluded that logging plans are very likely to cause serious damage to water given the steep slopes and unstable soils in the valley. Meanwhile, saw-milling jobs have been cut in half while logging volumes have doubled over the past 20 years. Loggers are being laid off while big machinery moves into the woods. This is a crisis point for the Slocan Valley, and a situation that is being duplicated in many areas of the province.

The Forest Practices Code has provided little, if any, protection, and the role of the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks in watershed protection has been steadily weakened by reductions in budgets and staff and by changes in the ministry's mandate.

The Slocan Valley is still extremely beautiful. Many people feel drawn to this area, there is an extraordinary concentration of artists, retirees and well-educated people looking for a peaceful life close to nature and free of urban stress. The loss of this valley by the calculated stripping of the last natural stands of trees in the next few years would be an enormous and unforgivable loss. Road building and logging are planned to begin this summer 2000 into three untouched domestic use watersheds in the Valley, while we are still awaiting a decision on the Perry Ridge case.

We propose that loggers and environmentalists must work through the transition from an economy that includes clearcut logging to one that is diversified and able to withstand the trauma of a major reduction in logging in this valley. We believe the time has come, and there may just be enough willingness on both sides, at last, to work out solutions together.

It is time that models of sustainability are established and promoted across the province.