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Vol. 90 Issue 52 • Wednesday, December 25, 2013 • www.arrowlakesnews.com • 250-265-3823 • $1.25 •
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Salmon reintroduction emerges as CRT review issue
This image from 1908 shows a hunting party from the Comaplix area near Galena Bay with the bounty from their salmon-shooting expedition on the Comaplix River. Salmon once migrated up the Columbia River past Revelstoke, but the annual passage was stopped in the late 1930s with the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State. Arrow Lakes Historical Society image Aaron Orlando
editor@revelstoketimesreview.com
If all goes according to Bill Green’s plan, the first reintroduced Columbia River salmon will cross the U.S.-Canada border in 2016, 78 years after the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam blocked their passage in 1938. The plan doesn’t stop there. His organization’s goal? “Let’s restore the salmon in 100 years, by 2040,” Green tells me in an interview from his office at the Cranbrook-based Canadian Columbia River Intertribal Fisheries Commission, where he serves as director, overseeing six staff.
Created in the early 1990s in partnership with the Ktunaxa, Shuswap and Okanagan First Nations, the CCRIFC has toiled (amongst other work) on the salmon restoration concept since then. Their efforts are often technical, bureaucratic or otherwise behind the scenes. Green explains, for example, that the CCRIFC was involved in the environmental assessment process for the Revelstoke Dam Unit 5 process, working to guarantee minimum water flows once the new generator is installed. “I think it’s fair to say as a result of our
efforts we now have the minimum flow there,” Green said. The minimum flows are beneficial to fish in that ecosystem. They also intervened in the Waneta and Brilliant expansions to advocate for designs that would facilitate future salmon passage. The CCRIFC’s efforts haven’t been in the public eye often – other than an occasional news story. They don’t even have a website, but they did launch an awareness campaign this year, including work at the Columbia Basin Watershed Network’s Think Like a Watershed Symposium in the East Kootenay this summer. An awareness team visited high schools in Revelstoke and Nakusp where they presented the salmon reintroduction concept to students, telling them they’d be the ones to bring the salmon back. But mostly, the CCRIFC studies, involves itself in regulatory processes related to the Columbia River system, liaises with partners in the U.S., and develops plans for salmon reintroduction. Their profile seems destined to be raised in the coming years. On Dec. 13, the ‘U.S. Entity’ – the American body representing U.S. stakeholders in the Columbia River Treaty review – released its ‘regional recommendations,’ sending them to the federal U.S. State Department for review. Key to the American provision is an increased emphasis on “ecosystem-based function” in the U.S. Entity position. They are seeking to add a spectrum of ecosystem considerations into the treaty, saying they were omitted in the 1964 agreement, and
have been provided for on an ad hoc basis since then. Prominent in the U.S. Entity position’s ecosystem-based recommendations is a recommended joint U.S.-Canada program to investigate and possibly implement “restored fish passage and [the] reintroduction of anadromous fish on the main stem of the Columbia River to Canadian spawning grounds.” It required significant organization and lobbying to get salmon passage restoration onto the U.S. Entity’s regional recommendations, explained Paul Lumley, Executive Director of the U.S.-based Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. (The Canadian and American entities have very similar names and do co-operate with each other, but are not to be confused with each other.) In an interview with the Times Review from his Portland, Oregon head office, the Yakama tribe-affiliated executive director explained getting the salmon restoration on the U.S. Entity agenda was “a real journey.” The U.S. Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s mission is to ensure a unified voice in the overall management of fishery resources, and to protect U.S. tribes’ treaty rights through exercising the sovereign powers of the tribes. Since they were formed in the late 1970s, the CRITFC has achieved legal wins, treaty partnerships, scientific studies, advocacy campaigns, conservation initiatives and gained regulatory and enforcement authority over fisheries.
See Salmon page 3
Executive Flight Centre says Lemon Creek spill to blame on bad directions Black Press
The company behind the truck that spilled its load of jet fuel into Lemon Creek this summer says the driver got bad directions. Executive Flight Centre is responding to a class action lawsuit filed by a Slocan Valley resident which names the Province, the helicopter company requiring the fuel for forest fire fighting and the transport company. Executive Flight Centre says they were given incorrect directions by the province who verbally communicated they should
use Lemon Creek Road. They also say the helicopter company Transwest provided no information on how to reach the staging area and delegated directions to the province. Before the tanker drove up Lemon Creek Road, another Executive Flight Centre driver used the road to try access the fuelling station. A maintenance worker, who happened to be on site, told him Lemon Creek wasn’t the proper way to access the staging area and gave out new directions. Executive Flight Centre says this driver informed the Prov-
“ I want to know more about mutual funds.”
ince of the mistaken directions but nothing was done to rectify the situation. “The Province knew, or should have know that, in the emergency conditions created by the firefighting operation, motorists involved in that operation, including Executive Fuel’s drivers, might mistakenly use Lemon Creek Road to access the staging area,” reads the company’s response to the lawsuit. They go on to say the road, under management of the Province, was dangerous and not properly maintained.
On July 26, 33,000 litres of jet fuel entered Lemon Creek and downstream rivers resulting in an evacuation of people and a massive cleanup. Executive Flight Centre says they’ve spent $4 million on that cleanup and wants that bill paid as well as any lawsuit payouts covered. The Province says they abide by the “polluter-pay principle” which keeps taxpayers from being on the hook for cleanups. Slocan Valley resident John Wittmayer comments on the “blame game” on Slocan Valley Emergency Response, a Facebook
page that has documented the spill and its outcomes. “There will be this assessing blame game and positioning to reduce the payout,” he says. “Industry should never be allowed to monitor themselves, and they will need to be accountable for their mishaps. The provincial government has an opportunity here to prove that they have the stewardship values to ensure this never happens again. If they ignore their responsibility in the matter, they will confirm what many people already suspect—that they are pro industry at any cost.”
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