Forest Practices Code Does NOT Sufficiently Protect Water

- assessment of planning process

by Stephan Martineau & Miriam Mason Martineau

The Forest Practices Code (FPC) is promoted provincially, nationally, and globally as one of the most comprehensive forest legislation in the world. According to Mr. Zirnhelt "the code sets tough new standards for logging, strict new limits on the size of clearcuts, and includes regulations to protect streams and wildlife" (from a letter to an EACT resident, May 16 1997). Again and again, concerned citizens are appeased with this set of regulations that will supposedly guarantee protection of domestic use water.

Despite these claims, 92% of logging in the province is clearcutting. Only 6% of low-elevation old-growth forest has been protected. The Annual Allowable Cut remains at over 20% above the estimates of MOF as to being at a sustainable level. There is, to this date, no section in the Forest Practices Code that provides protection for species Police at Community blockade on Perry Ridge that are endangered, threatened or vulnerable. 83% of streams in an audit of 1996 cutblocks were clearcut right to their banks. Not one charge has been laid against a forest company since the introduction of the Forest Practices Code ("Broken Promises", Greenpeace and Sierra Legal Defense Fund, 1997). The District Managers have such wide discretionary powers that they may disregard most aspects of the Code, including regulations concerning riparian areas. All government agents are presently exempt from accountability. Currently only fish bearing streams over 1.5 meters wide have no-harvest buffer zones. Section 3(ii)(a) of the Forest Road Regulations gives the District Manager the authority to allow road building in riparian zones when "no other practical option exists", which allows economical interest to supersede environmental concerns. The Code also exempts a company from the responsibility of actions which they knew or should have known would cause environmental damage, if they had been granted a permit from the Forest Service. The Ministry of Environment does not have joint approval and decision-making power on all aspects of the Code, which again allows for economics to preside over the environment.

The leading edge of science provides knowledge that is not represented in the Forest Practices Code (Herb Hammond, Slocan Valley Newsletter, 1997):

1) Old growth forests produce the highest quality of water. The FPC does not protect these forests in consumptive use watersheds. The majority of trees in the Slocan Valley consumptive use watersheds are less than 100 years old and are fast approaching optimum levels of water quality, quantity and timing of flow.
2)The FPC does not provide protection for decaying wood in any size of fallen tree. Decayed wood is nature's water storage and filtration system, holding about 20 times more water than the same volume of soil. High quality water depends on large amounts of decayed wood provided by large old trees when they die
3)The EACT watershed is probably planned to be cut in continuous cycles (rotations), which would disallow large, old multi-canopied forests from developing in the future. The FPC allows logging in consumptive use watersheds, which are ecosystems that have ecological limits. The FPC does not protect the many small seepage channels, wet areas and smaller streams that form the headwaters of creeks further down slope. It is these small systems that provide our households with water. Additionally, it is the smaller, unprotected creeks that are most important in supplying nutrient load for downstream fisheries.

How is it possible to protect water and not to protect these small rivulets?

For the above-mentioned reasons, we are not in the least appeased by the fact that MOF and SFP continuously depend on the Forest Practices Code as a safeguard to the destruction of our watershed.

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