Well it’s that time of year again, the Squamish River clean up is coming up. Make sure you have April 22nd on your calendar to head up and help get the river clean. If you have any further questions get in touch with squamishcleanup@gmail.com.
On January 19, 2012 I attended another meeting on the run of river projects on Harrison Lake (Big Silver, Statlu, Shovel and Tretheway). The short version is that for Shovel and Tretheway, Innergex (who acquired CloudWorks) does not feel that there is enough paddler use to provide any mitigation outside the road improvements that have to be done for them to even get to the sites.
They recognize that Big Silver has more kayakers wanting access but they again feel that there needs to be no mitigation. They figure that the project will add a few more days of paddling since they will be diverting during high flows bringing the flow to levels that are manageable by more people.
What they don’t mention is that though they ‘add’ days during high flows they remove almost all of the other paddling days, resulting in a net loss of paddling days. At least that’s how I read the graph supplied and shown below. You can get a larger image by clicking.
Looks like we move the season o few weeks and remove a bunch of days to me.
They do offer the possibility of a gauge for the projects that is available online and while this is good it’s just not enough. Where are the scheduled releases? I am told that Fisheries won’t allow releases because of the drastic change in water levels, I find this hard to believe. These are glacier fed creeks, that means they spike a few meters in the sun, because of snow melt, every year.
A number of people I talked with at Innergex were also open to the idea of having a festival on the river. This of course would mean known releases, if in fact the festival happened, which of course it may not.
If these projects must go ahead I think we need at a minimum:
We need to let Navigable Waters and the Environmental Assessment Office know that currently the mitigaion is not acceptable.
Certianly the people I talked with at Innergex and CloudWorks wanted to find a place where we both could be as happy as possible with the recreation opportunities.
You can read the full navigation reports at the links below.
We need you to make comments expressing the lack of mitigation for recreation. Getting enough comments will help us have a stronger negotiating point with Innergex and CloudWorks. Go to the EAO Site and you will see the comment links in the sidebar. Please add you comments to each river and get anyone you know to add their comments.
Get another take on the meeting at FVWW.
On June 9 I was invited (along with a number of other paddlers) to meet with Cloudworks and talk about the 4 Run of River projects on Shovel, Big Silver, Statlu, and Tretheway. After a brief overview of how navigation is to be addressed during the process we all gathered around maps and tried to make sure that their markings were correct on each creek.
While a few had some errors (Class VI where it’s not that hard at all) overall they were pretty okay and we had a decent chat about what were the most important runs and features.
We also tried to nail down what the optimal flows were for each river but since there hasn’t been a standard way of measuring them we’d be blindly guessing. I told them that in the future an online gauge should be put in a year in advance and made available if they want that type of information.
Cloudworks then showed us some proposed mitigation measures which included:
While the above things are great we’re missing one really big thing, river releases. The reality is that they’ll have a bulldozer there already and the Hydro data they’ll have too. All they’re doing is making these things available to us. If we don’t have water through releases then it doesn’t matter if all the other things exist.
Any questions about the meeting?
We just had a local Squamish paddler get in touch about a River Clean Up day on the Squamish River. If you use the river you should get out and help clean it up. Not only does this do good things for the environment but it also helps all user groups see each other having equal ownership of our resources. If you were looking for something to do on April 22nd look no more. See the whole email from Matthew Joyce below.
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been in contact with Clint Goyette with Valley Fishing Guides Ltd, Brian Niska of Whistler Fly Fishing and the Squamish River Watershed Society and we’ve identified several areas in the Squamish, Cheakamus and Mamquam Rivers that could really used a cleanup.
On April 22nd (Good Friday) between 10am until mid afternoon, a few friends, several Steelhead Society of BC directors and I will be cleaning up the Squamish, Cheakamus and Mamquam and their respective river banks. I’ve arranged to dump whatever we collect at the Squamish Landfill for free as the Squamish district has agreed to waive tipping fees. Squamish District will also be supplying gloves and garbage bags as well. We’re working on coffee and donuts as well.
We could use as some help, so if you’re around on Good Friday, please consider joining us. Please email me at mpj2@sfu.ca or call me at 778-558-6595 if you’re able to help and if let me know how much junk your vehicle can haul. If you’ve got a truck and or trailer, even better.
Thanks, Matt Joyce
I’ve just returned from the open house (hosted by Cloudworks) held in Harrison Hot Springs dealing with the project on Tretheway, Big Silver, Shovel, and Statlu. I found out a few new things about the projects. Contrary to my original understanding, a number of the projects will in fact have a headpond at the intake. Statlu will have a headpond that will flood a portion of the river above the 3rd bridge (typically a Class III run above a Class IV-V run). The biggest headpond will be on Big Silver. It appears that it will flood at least 1km of river above the intake. This will flatten out much of a run that is paddled a number of times every year. Cloudworks is supposed to send me proper GPS coordinates for the estimated top of the headpond. When I get them I’ll publish them so we can get more comments on how this will affect the navigation of the run.
It was just brought to my attention that there is an open house on April 6th at 7PM in Harrison Hot Springs to talk with CloudWorks about the proposed Run of River projects up the side of Harrison.
This is a great opportunity for paddlers to express concern over navigation of the rivers. If they’re not worth paddling we won’t be going through Harrison, purchasing snacks, beer, gas…which will hurt the local economy. Please show up and lend your voice to those concerned about river navigation.
April 6th 7pm Memorial Hall 290 Esplanade Ave Harrison Hot Springs
It seems that BC Hydro is looking for input on its green energy plan. If you’ve been watching any of the paddling new lately you’ll know that Run of River (RoR) projects are considered ‘green’ despite the fact that they divert water out of rivers/creeks, increase sedimentation of the dewatered portion, and decrease the chance of high water ‘river clearing’ events through the diversion.
Now is the time to contact BC Hydro and let them know that this is hardly ‘green’ energy. Let them know that they need to stop purchasing power from RoR projects until they have a long term plan to solve the debt problem (BC Hydro pays more than they charge us for that power) and force all RoR projects through environmental assessment (which also makes them take recreation in to account as a stakeholder).
You can get in touch with BC Hydro at their site or by emailing them directly integrated.resource.planning@bchydro.com.
Speak up and let’s keep our rivers open.
For some more detailed information see the FVWW forum.
A newer river on the list for development of an IPP is the Hurley River. The Hurley is found north of Pemberton in the South Wester BC interior.
I’ve been contacted by the IPP and one of the companies they’ve contracted to do the environmental assessment of the project. They want to know how much it’s paddled and where people put in and take out.
In all honesty I’ve been working on this one for a few weeks and have come up with little concrete information. I know it’s paddled and can find at least two reports saying as much. It’s a V – VI creek that’s way out there in terms of access.
The reality is that I have about 10 rivers to work through for Navigable waters and different IPP’s in BC so without more information I’m not going to put a big fight into a remote river that will not be paddled by a large amount of the community.
If you have more information and would like to take up the fight for the Hurley let me know. If you just have more information (GPS coordinates of put ins, trip dates, best flows) I’m also happy to take it and report it to Navigable waters and the IPP so that we can at least get releases if the project goes forward.
You can see more information on the IPP, where it will be and the full proposal here.
