WATERSHED UPDATE – July 12th, 2008
Hi,
It has been several months since I last sent out an e-mail updating activities in our community watershed.
Perhaps many of you have had a chance to read the front page article in this weeks Coast Reporter titled “Residents urged to adhere to water restrictions” where the SCRD noted that during the three days of the Canada Day long weekend, the water distribution system was put at risk for water shortages due to the high consumption at a record level of 27 million liters of water on June 30th, 2008.
The SCRD goes on to state that this high level of consumption cannot be maintained for more than a few days without posing a serious fire hazard and risks to the community if a fire breaks out.
This further reinforces the importance of protecting our drinking watersheds from any industrial activities that could potentially reduce the quantity and quality of our drinking water.
Over the past ten months I have been attending the Sechelt community forest advisory committee meetings in an attempt to understand what activities are planned for any potential harvesting in both Grey Creek and Chapman Creek watersheds.
As many of you are aware, over 50% of the forest licence held by the Sechelt Community Forest lies within the boundaries of our two watersheds. In March several residents were forced into blockading the tree spacing program in Chapman Creek where the Community Forest had started to remove 70,000 15yr old trees in order to space the stand (34 hectares) and allow for harvesting of the mature trees in 40 years or so.
This coming Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 10:00am several concerned citizens and myself will be appearing as a “delegation” at the SCRD watershed meeting to be held in the SCRD office located at the top of Field Road, Wilson Creek.
The purpose of our presentation to the SCRD is to request that the SCRD support the Concerned Citizens by adopting the four key principles that we believe would represent the views of the community when it comes to operating the Community Forest and respecting other public values beside timber extraction.
A key public value is “transparency” whereby members of the public should be allowed to attend Community Forest board meetings and both hear and understand the decisions that are made with respect to the operation and harvesting plans of the CF.
In the past two years since the CF was first formed all board meetings have been held behind doors closed to the public. We have found out that Burns Lake community forest which has been operating since 1998 has always allowed the public to attend their monthly board meetings.
The only venue open to the public on the Sunshine Coast is the advisory committee and even here, every 2nd meeting is closed to the public. Another weakness I have observed by attending the advisory committee meetings is that no minutes of board meetings is made available to the advisory committee members and also no advisory committee member is allowed to attend CF board meetings.
So while the advisory committee is set up to be the “voice” of the community, the present closed door governance structure of the CF does not provide anyone with the necessary means to access information about what is planned for forest activities in any sensitive areas on the Sunshine Coast that lies with the forest licence tenure area.
The reason that I am providing you with this update is because if you can spare the time, we would love to have you come out to the July 17th, 2008 meeting at the SCRD offices and show support for our principles and recommendations that we will be presenting to the SCRD.
The more residents that come out in support of protecting our drinking water, the stronger our collective message is to both the SCRD and the Sechelt Community Forest that the community expects to have its drinking water protected from any unnecessary industrial activity that could impact our supply of drinking water.
Hope to see many of you at the meeting on the 17th of July 2008 at 10:00am
Regards
John Bebbington