Accretion on Kootenay Lake

Accretion on Kootenay Lake

I started the process of accretion on Kootenay Lake. Accretion is a legal term meaning that when

land increases by natural means (such as soil accumulation), the property owner is entitled to the

new land. In the case of land bounded by water, land may emerge over time, through flooding,

water-level changes, the abandonment of a channel, or other means. The level of Kootenay Lake

fell after two dams were built. The typical high-water mark dropped by six feet.

I had to make a couple of very serious decisions that the water level would no longer come up as

high as it used to. I was looking after building the airport runway in Nelson, quite a substantial

little runway, three thousand feet long. The federal government chipped in toward building the

airport.

But their engineers said that the runway and airport buildings had to be built to a certain

elevation that would not flood in the future. They wanted to use the elevation established by

historic flood levels. I had laid out the big mall in Nelson at six feet lower. I would have been

sued if that darn thing ever flooded.

I had no qualms about saying that the lake level was not going to rise. I had a letter that the

Ministry of Environment in Victoria had written to the City of Nelson, showing all the previous

elevations of Kootenay Lake. The flood levels had been monitored over many years, especially

after the Libby Dam was built on the Kootenay River in the United States and the Duncan Dam

on the Duncan River on the north end of Kootenay Lake. This letter said that the dams had

caused the lake’s level to drop by six feet.

I used that letter to advise the city on what to do with the runway. We could not afford to build a

runway 120 feet wide and 3000 feet long at an elevation of five feet, as the engineers wanted. By

God, it would have cost a couple million dollars to truck in the gravel to make the runway five

feet higher.

I got the engineers to back down. I like to tell people about how we built the runway with

garbage, gravel, sawdust, and everything else we had at hand. It is still a pretty good runway.

Initially we built it with just loose gravel and some oil, so it wasn't dusty. Now the runway has a

nice blacktop. It is as smooth as a baby's bottom and dead flat. There are three helicopter stations

and room for a dozen airplanes. The runway works well, and its construction was one of my

prouder moments.

The accretion issue matters. Thirty years ago, people could own the beach. Their property lines

were then changed so that they started back from the beach. way back in the bush. Now, a

person could own to the edge of vegetation. But even this change caused difficulties. We were

kind of following vegetation in some places. But people would rake the beach. There would not

be even a hint of any vegetation growing. Other people would not touch the vegetation, and there

would be bushes and even trees growing out further because the lake level had retreated. Some

of the properties would be easy to document, and they were inspected.

The government was quite cautious about changes due to accretion. The local surveyor's opinion

was not always good enough; the government would send the land inspector over from

Cranbrook, and he would inspect the land as well. This fellow was a little bit stingy. He felt that

accretion should not be allowed. The regional district made a motion to recommend to the

government that the accretions be disallowed. I still remember two senior representatives of the

Government Surveys Branch—the surveyor general and a former surveyor general—came and

talked to the directors in the West Kootenays. These surveyors pointed out that we had to abide

by the Land Act.

I did something that the Land Branch did not like. I started thinking like the engineering branch.

I thought that it was silly that we had to rely on the growth of weeds and brush and then not treat

fairly the people that looked after their beach and raked it. The people who looked after their

beach did not qualify for accretion because there was no vegetation. So, I adopted an elevation

for the whole lake. I dealt with West Kootenay Power, which had all the recorded elevations of

the lake over the years. This information showed where the appropriate boundary for the

properties should be, and I registered that new property line. The Land Registry Office was

reluctant to file something like that.

I had a similar problem with the Fairmont cemetery. I also had to press the Land Registry Office

to get them to record the land allocation. I worked on three other cemeteries for which there were

no drawings remaining. I had to figure out where the graves were and try to make a drawing of

the cemetery. Years ago, the plans were ripped up by the guys digging graves and managing the

cemeteries. But fifty years later the people managing the cemetery needed to figure out where

they were going to put a body. These plans must be recorded at the time they are made.

But, as a surveyor, I had significant challenges getting the officials to accept our plans. The

fellows that were processing them at that time, twenty years ago maybe, had trouble accepting

them, and they did not care to argue with me about them. They just said that the plans looked to

be almost acceptable. But they did not like me using engineering technology to document the

natural boundary, which is what is written in the Land Act. And one official disputed the

boundary quite vehemently. This person insisted on having an engineer look at it to make sure

that the shoreline was appropriate.

I was not impressed. I thought engineers did not know anything about boundaries. In my

covering letter, I added that I was a licensed civil engineer and said that in my opinion the plan

was adequate. That shut down the push-back. I have to say not everybody was as knowledgeable

about some of those things as I was.

Over the years, I did dozens of these accretions or additions to properties. One involved a

lakeshore property, more than half of which was solid rock, a couple of thousand feet in total.

The rocks were almost cliffs, and it was extremely difficult to get decent measurements. They

had just come out with a fancy digital camera that we were able to use. It essentially produced a

moving or linear picture of the entire coastline and allowed me to make creative use of a new

technology to solve an otherwise intractable problem. I did not request permission to use the

equipment. I just did it. From my perspective, I had no choice, unless I wanted to bring in a

mountain climber.

Today we have an instrument that you point at a specific spot to get a measurement. At the time I

used the new camera, the standard technology was to use a steel tape. This would have been

totally impractical. So, we improvised and it worked.