Newsletter Index
Feb 2000
Dec 1999
August 1999
June 15-30 1999
June 1-15 1999
April 1999
March 1999
November 1998
March 1998

CREEK OF THE WEEK

Featuring McFayden Creek

McFayden Creek is a Community Watershed that has 20 licensees on the southern end of Perry Ridge. The licensees use the water for both domestic and agricultural purposes. There are organic farms, orchards, stock animals as well as riding horses and pets that depend on water from McFayden Creek. As a result there are many barns, chicken coops and outbuildings situated on these properties. In addition some of these properties also have rental houses.

The residents are a diverse rural community. The community includes farmers, small business operators, senior citizens, school age children, retirees, teachers, health practitioners, carpenters and forest workers. The community works together to maintain a well functioning water works.

Edgar Creek, which is South of McFayden and supplies one of the oldest homesteads in Vallican. This particular property was the old general store and gas station.

McFayden was selected for a monitoring station because it has Community Watershed status and a history of concerned water users who seek to protect the quality, quantity and timing of flow of their water source. As well McFayden has a reliable reader, Barry Burgoon, PRWUA Director, who continues to monitor and take samples working for the McFayden Creek Water Users. The readings include air and water temperature data. Also flow data is recorded from the weir placed in the creek. Air and water temperatures are read 3 times per week. The water samples are taken to Passmore Laboratories for testing. This program has been in place since 1996.

Allen Isaacson has looked at the monitoring data and states in his interpretation of the data that “any increase in the amount of flow or increase in the peak flow will result in a large increase in the amount of sediment at the measuring site.” (Which is not far above our dam site)

The stream is naturally in an unstable condition due to geologic conditions. Any loss of vegetation to increase the flow or introduced sediment from road construction would increase the amount of sediment. It would travel through the watershed very quickly. There would also be increased erosion in the stream channel and increased transport of the in channel eroded sediment to the fan at the bottom of the watershed.” We note that there are homes on this fan.

McFayden Creek has unique wildlife, water, cultural and biodiversity values. Both human and animal communities depend on it.

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GOVERNMENT CONTINGENCY PLAN FOR YOUR WATER

Did you know the LRUP table has recommended that:

1. The responsibility for mapping your intake accurately is up to you...the government was originally supposed to do this but found it would cost $50,000 and they decided that was too high a price for your safety.
2. If you do not map your water intake accurately and it is damaged, you are not covered under the contingency plan.
3. The public is expected to monitor their streams for increased sediment due to harvesting. Professional monitors are paid substantial salaries for doing this kind of work...the LRUP is telling you to do it for nothing.
4. Even after you mark your buried waterline, the licensee is permitted to skid logs or build roads across it. This will compact the ground and could cause freezing of the line.
5. Under the Contingency Plan, if your water is damaged the onus is on you to prove it was due to logging (this is an extremely difficult argument to prove legally).
6. “A short term supply of potable water will generally be provided by water tanker. If water users desire more elaborate contingency planning, such as an alternate water supply from a neighbouring creek, the water users will be responsible for initiating negotiations with the industrial proponent to draft a detailed contingency plan.” This translates into: you get limited bottled water for the SHORT TERM. Anything more than that you must negotiate with the logging contractor responsible for the damage.

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SLIDE OF THE WEEK

Coffee Creek

Coffee Creek, a major tributary to Kootenay Lake between Nelson and Kaslo, swollen by rainfall was buried under a debris torrent some time during the evening of November 12, 1999. This landslide dumped an estimated 100,000 cubic meters of mud, rock, and logging debris into the channels of Coffee Creek and transformed this creek into a raging torrent that cut new channels, devoured trees, damaged bridges, destroyed forest service roads, and Highway #31. Repair costs are estimated to be as high as $500,000 to get the roads and bridges usable again. As of the end of December, $229 841 has been spent.

This debris torrent originated in a 30 year-old clear-cut perched on steep slopes above Coffee Creek. The outer edge of several old skid trails became saturated with water to the point of failure and this torrent blew down the slope scalping the new forest to bedrock. It obliterated the Coffee Creek Road for a width of 450 ft and dumped its debris into the channel Coffee Creek.

This landslide and many smaller landslides occurred in the Coffee Creek drainage, despite many thousands of dollars spent in an attempt to repair damage created by poor logging and road-building practices. It amply demonstrates that the public cannot consider itself safe from logging in the back valleys let alone the logging being done and proposed above our homes and in our watersheds.

This is the fourth and worst landslide event to damage Highway #31 in the last year between Balfour and Meadow Creek. These events all originated from clear-cut logging and their associated access roads. Two of these events occurred from logging administered under the Forest Practices Code.

Craig Pettitt, Regional Coordinator Forest Watch BC

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Letters

District Manager Refuses Perry Ridge Cost/Benefit Analysis

The dollar figure for planning, road building, cost over runs, and related expenses to accessing timber on Perry Ridge is enormous. So far, with legal cost and LRUP process, we can put it at around $2 million. And this is for a half finished 7.7 km road with no end in sight for legal expenses, more planning, more road building, more cost over runs for the rest of the ridge.

The Perry Ridge Local Resource Use Plan (LRUP) has been running for 2 years, supposedly for the overall benefit of the community. The process is winding down and we now have the first draft of recommendations with many loose ends and omissions. In this glorified logging plan, they don't recommend a cost/benefit analyses, or eco-certification for the timber to be harvested, nor do they recommend to establish a credible, minimum 5 year, data base for the many creeks regarding sediment and flow BEFORE logging starts.

With all the controversy over Perry Ridge, it should be easy to prove to this community that there is indeed a benefit in the proposed logging. We know the cost so far for planning, road building, legal, etc. and can project the cost for the remainder of the ridge. We also have a timber supply analysis resulting from the LRUP, in the future, with a corresponding value. Now, all the Ministry of Forests has to do is to compare the two and presto, we would know the answer. No rocket science needed here. I have asked the MoF District Manager to do this, in writing, but he refused. Could it be that a cost/benefit analysis might show that it makes no economic sense to log Perry Ridge? That the cost of getting to the trees outweighs the benefits? It has happened in other areas of BC.

Forestry in BC. is political, designed to accommodate the forest industry, with minor cosmetic considerations for other values. Water users are not responsible for the mismanagement and overreacting which results in the pressure to log the watersheds. We have a right to clean water and quality of life. We know that Perry Ridge is a sensitive, geographically unstable landscape prone to land slides. To risk danger to life and limb, property values, and water, with a timber-biased process will benefit only a few. Please, voice your concern in the upcoming public forum regarding Perry Ridge, which will be announced by MoF.

Gunter Retterath

Tales From the City

Friends,

In early December I joined 50,000 others in Seattle to voice my concern over corporate control of the planet in the form of the World Trade Organization. A two day teach-in featuring speakers from all over the world including Maude Barlow and David Suzuki addressed a myriad of problems created by globalization. Genetically altered plants and animals, global forest and marine life depletion, inhumane labour practices and fiscal irresponsibility (booming stock markets alongside growing poverty everywhere) were some of the main topics.

Unfortunately the media only dwelled on a few incidents of disruption. I found almost everyone concerned, polite and serious. Harvard faculty and labour union leaders marched alongside church people and kids from Halifax. It was an energizing five days for everyone, with the understanding that our WORK has only just begun. If you would like further information and written material (particularly addressing forestry issues) please contact me.

With love for all God's creation, Laura Tiberti

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Logging landslide risk pits people against profit

Stephen Hume

THE VANCOUVER SUN, SATURDAY, JANUARY 29, 2000

A landslide has twice hit a road travelled by school buses, but logging continues.

One afternoon 10 years ago, thousands of tonnes of mud, snow, rock and broken trees roared down a mountain in the Slocan Valley. It hit the highway shortly after the local school bus passed.

Six years later, another slide missed a school bus by less than an hour.

In the last 18 months, the region has seen 34 new slides, one-third associated with up-slope logging, says Craig Pettitt of Forest Watch. ^*

Last fall, forestry scientists presented a model for assessing landslide risks on slopes to be logged in the Slocan. The model rates landslide hazard and possible consequences on a scale from high to low and then correlates the two on a grid to yield the level of risk.

Death or many serious injuries or the destruction of numerous buildings get a “high” rating for consequences. A few serious injuries or the destruction of one building - a house, say - get a “moderate” rating.

But the formula doesn't reassure those citizens who say they are being made the acceptable risk of logging on slopes that are too steep, too unstable and create slide hazards for those below.

On the grid, moderate hazard multiplied by moderate consequence yields a moderate risk. In other words, what science rates a “moderate” consequence could include the destruction of a family's home so long as only a few members sustained serious injuries.

But the land-use table where logging decisions for the valley are made is stacked with government and industry representatives who have direct interests in logging, not stopping logging, charges environmental activist Anne Sherrod. She says the panel categorizes moderate risk as “insignificant1” when drawing up its plans.

What's insignificant to one party may be of supreme significance to another.

Austin Greengrass is a mechanic by trade. He is one of five protesters being sued by the province for blocking^§ a logging road on Perry Ridge in the Slocan. He says he developed his intense interest in geotechnical risk assessment when a land slump left the front end of his house hanging in space.

He acknowledges that the causes are unclear but notes that the huge land movement happened one year after a massive clearcut on the slopes above his property, which subsequently went from an appraised value of $105,000 to less than $6,000 almost overnight.

“It's frightening when you see a fresh landslide,” Greengrass says. “The people who do these risk assessments have never heard one come rumbling down in the middle of the night and sat there wondering where it is on the slope above you.”

His acute financial and emotional discomfort can be explained away in the neat mathematical models.

What can't be explained away is why a democratically elected government is prepared to accept the premise that when there's profit to be made, the homes and children of its citizens suddenly become an “acceptable risk.”

If a slide narrowly missing a school bus is acceptable, what would clearly be unacceptable?

A slide missing the school bus by three minutes? By one minute? Is a miss always as good as a mile?

Shannon Bennett, 38, puts her little ones on the school bus every weekday morning.

“I don't think there is any level of acceptable risk when it comes to my kids,” she says.

*Please note typo error “one-third” should read “two-thirds” of landslides were caused by logging.
§Correction: “blocking” should read “protesting at”.

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Friends and Relations

1. The Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance (SVWA) - a coalition of 11 community watershed groups and individual water users. The principles of the alliance are that water protection must be the first priority for planning and management activities in consumptive-use watersheds and that water users must have a share in the decision making in their watersheds. The SVWA is in turn affiliated with:
   • The BC Tapwater Alliance - members actively monitor political processes and advocate for the protection of community water supply watersheds from resource use exploitation.
   • The BC Environmental Network (BCEN) - a network of community-based British Columbia environmental organizations who advocate environmental responsibility and community participation in activities leading to ecological sustainability.
2. 3. The International Network of Forests and Communities - the Network works to actively promote and support ecosystem-based community forestry worldwide, and in the global arena. Their vision is embodied in the Saanich Statement of Principles on Forests and Communities, which PRWUA has signed on to.

1. The Silva Forest Foundation, (SFF), is a nonprofit charitable organization based in the Slocan Valley. The SFF develops and teaches the principles of Ecologically Responsible Forest Use, including alternatives to conventional timber management.
2. Valhalla Wilderness Society - Valhalla's mission statement is “promoting preservation of wilderness and wildlife and the improvement of forest management practices.”
3. Sierra Legal Defense - protects the environment by upholding and enforcing the law. They provide free legal advice and free legal representation to individuals and groups fighting important environmental battles.

• Forest Watch - they “watch the woods” for unacceptable forest practices. BC Forest Watch is part of Global Forest Watch, a World Resources Institute project, which links forest watchers around the world. Craig Pettitt of New Denver is the Southeast BC regional coordinator.

Forest Stewardship Council

A Change of Thinking?

In a recent announcement the Minister of Forests, Dave Zirnhelt, said that he would test the application of three different eco-certification systems. There will be six projects that will take place on the Small Business Forest Enterprise Program (SBFEP) lands. Most of Perry Ridge is on SBFEP land. The three systems to be tested are International Standards Organization, Canadian Standard Association and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

FSC is the only eco-certification system that uses the general principles and criteria for sustainable forestry that are generally accepted elsewhere in the world. Also FSC is the only scheme that involves third party (independent of Government) certification. International consumers will not accept any scheme that is not third party. Although a step in the right direction, the current proposal is far too limited. The ministry can appear to be moving toward eco-certification while continuing with unsustainable practices on the remaining 99% + of the land base. The Ministry will be able to defer any real change until the trials are completed several years from now.