Ben Parfitt’s Narwhal article “Muddied Waters: how clearcut logging is driving a water crisis in B.C.’s interior“, has been open in my web browser for a few weeks. I finally read it on my way home from my recent trip to the Comox Valley.
The story is about unsustainable logging practices in watersheds — specifically, watersheds that are providing communities across British Columbia with their drinking water. Parfitt’s story revolves around the rapid decline of the water quality in Peachland. It opens with long-time resident Richard Smith’s account of the pristine local water quality when he moved there in 1947. Over the past decade, the situation has changed – drastically. Now Peachland is on the hook for building a $24 million water treatment facility. So how does immaculate water become a murky, turbid mess causing boil water advisories so quickly? As many in the story highlight, the problem is the forestry practices. Despite supposed provincial government protections for community drinking water sources going back to the 19th century, the Ministry of Forests ignored the long-standing advice and the forests around Peachland’s watershed have been allowed to be devastated.
Increasing cost of unrestraint
A common theme in my work as an MLA and former municipal councillor is the growing infrastructure deficit – the inability for communities, and our province, to keep up with maintaining and repairing aging infrastructure and building new infrastructure. Now, Peachland, a town of 5500 people is expending millions of dollars to build a facility to process water that nature was doing better. Why? Because the provincial forestry policy has no restraint.
Timing is everything. Parfitt’s story is a disturbing confirmation of the story I heard several times (in just a few days) in the Comox Valley. In November 2018, the province announced a $125 million water treatment facility to clean up turbid water from the valley’s drinking water source, Comox Lake.
The Cumberland Community Forest initiative is working to protect the forests in the watersheds surrounding Cumberland, BC. Ironically, the forests they want to save from logging is the source of the drinking water for Courtenay and Comox but not Cumberland itself. Cumberland’s water comes from another lake outside of the few hundred hectares they are fundraising to purchase. However, they recognize that the entire watershed, forests, lakes, creeks, streams and rivers are all part of the same integrated system, a reality that is apparently lost on the provincial government.
Unfortunately, there seems to be little difference in approach on this issue between the former BC Liberals and current BC NDP governments.
Playing catch-up
Finally, it’s important to put a little perspective on the costs of our decisions. While the federal and provincial politicians are scrambling to cut ribbons on more than $150 million dollars in announcements for unnecessary facilities saving two communities from poor resource management decisions by the forest ministry, other politicians are bristling with pride about a $142 million investment in protecting, enhancing and studying wild salmon across British Columbia. Apparently, nobody is making the connection.
Like the ancient trees that move so many British Columbians, issues about forests and fish in British Columbia are some of the oldest and most complex of any issue we deal with. Frustrating factors around private and Crown land, tree-cutting licenses and stumpage rates make this an incredibly difficult policy area to navigate. While the provincial government is engaging and consulting British Columbians about forestry policy, loggers and community activists are telling me what they told Parfitt. We need less talk and more action. We need more restraint and more political willingness to protect our watersheds. Protecting drinking water should be a priority.
Had we taken the advice of our predecessors and actually put human health ahead of short-term profit, actually governing this province with a holistic understanding and respect for the ecosystems that sustain life, then perhaps we would not have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to chase poor decisions. Hopefully, we are learning from our mistakes.
Well said Adam,
The perfect time to protect watersheds was is in the past, but the only time we have is right now.
Thus it is even more important to do what we can to make proactive investments in harmonious environmentally sound actions. It is not just our home. It is our life.
Jacob Enns
I would agree that more careful attention to ecosystem hydrology is necessary and pre and post logging research on drainage health indicators should be Ministry of Environment objective.
But suggesting policy based on recollections of 75 years ago is a questionable practise.
While it is suggested people remember clean water years ago from these lakes and stream it should be remembered 100 years ago these valleys were heavily logged from top to bottom using rail roads in a most wasteful and unregulated manner. The Comox and Ash Valleys are probably on third and fourth harvest rotation. It seems challenging to speculate that added closures on current (all be it less than perfect) logging, which is far less obtrusive than 100 years ago, is the pathway to memories of clean water 75 years ago.
I think one very relevant impact to consider is population growth and demand for water. The population has more than quadrupled and homes have gone from 1 bathroom/outhouse, wells and septic fields to 2/3 bathrooms extremely large complex (expensive) water distribution and waste water collection systems. Additionally growing reliance on tourism demands clean cheap water on demand.
I remember fish in local streams that are now filled in or culverted to accommodate subdivisions with almost zero regulation for ecosystem health. Small buffers and 5% parkland is simple tokenism. We upped our requirements to 40% green space and tree retention but this is carried and changed by demands of developers and new councils. So I always find it challenging to sit in middle of formerly healthy ecosystem which is now mass of concrete and asphalt and think logging reforms will return us to past recollection of healthy ecosystems.
Your closing paragraph suggests a holistic appreciate of ecosystem health. I would suggest then by definition of holistic approach that focusing attention on logging, (which needs vigilant controls), distorts holistic concept. How about better ecosystem research in forest practises (as prescribed in Clayoquot Scientific Panel report), urban tax on subdivisions to protect basic ecosystem health in communities, planting trees in right of ways and unused farmlands as a effort to apply holistic approach across whole spectrum of land use management. I recognize some communities are doing what they can but ecosystem management is intentional not random.
My mind is blown that you’ve got all these posts about things going on in other districts and not a peep about Gardom Pond, which is currently being drained to the detriment of the aquifer and everyone who relies on that aquifer for their wells. You’re right, protecting drinking water SHOULD be a priority. It’s a crying shame that it’s not, even for the Greens.
It’s long past the time for governments, at all levels, to have an appropriate and functioning agency regarding ecosystems. The situation presently is that most “ministries” that affect our life-giving environments don’t understand, care or are involved meaningfully in ecosystem- based management! Short term politics and “involved” industrial direction are fettering our near futures. It is time for a different paradigm. A Ministry of Ecology is a first step and aided by a public ecosystem foundation involving NGO’s, industry, First Nations, academia, and the general public. A supporting ecosystem trust, with non-partisan funding, would support the activities of the ecosystem foundation. NOTE: any new approach has to go beyond advisory and action has to be fully integrated at the community level. The will of the public must be seen to be done with will, intent and action of our governments in an accountable and responsible manner . Let’s get on with it –too much time and past efforts have jeopardized our natural living resources, in particular. We can and must do very much better, otherwise at our peril!