B.C. TAP WATER ALLIANCE
COMMUNITY WATERSHED ISSUES:
WATERSHED FILES




Rossland City Controversy over Multiple Development Proposals in Topping Creek Drinking Watershed Reserve
December 8, 2008

In late November, 2007, a San Diego developer, who had recently purchased the rights to the winter ski hill at Red Mountain, in Rossland City boundaries, proposed to extend his operations with proposals for an 18-hole championship golf course and hotel/residential complex within the adjacent Topping Creek drinking watershed, a main source of drinking water for Rossland City. The developer also proposed ski-lift expansion throughout the upper areas of Topping Creek. By February 2008, almost 1,000 residents (in a community of just over 3,000) signed a petition against the proposals.

The Greater Vancouver Watersheds: Capilano,
Seymour and Coquitlam Creeks
The file includes numerous reports written over a seven year period on the fascinating administrative and controversial history of the Greater Vancouver watersheds that span a century. On November 10, 1999, the Greater Vancouver Water District Administration Board passed a five-point resolution on the re-protection of these three sources that provide one-half of BC's population with a domestic water supply.
The Sunshine Coast Regional District's Watersheds, Chapman and Grey Creeks
Near to Vancouver, the controversy of logging, primarily in Chapman Creek, began in the late 1960s and erupted in 1990, after years of broken promises and severe degradation of the watersheds.


Vancouver Island -
Private Timber Lands

Port Alberni Valley, Comox Lake
Following the tampering with and removal of the 1994 Private Forest Land legislation in 2004 by the BC Liberal government, the largest private timber land owners on Vancouver Island - TimberWest and Island Timberlands - have begun to accelerate logging of primarily second growth timber. Over the last three years (post 2004), TimberWest has deliberately taken advantage of this deregulation by logging drinking watersheds and ruining fish habitat, gaining a new notorious reputation by Vancouver Island residents and concerned Island administrators. Information about Port Alberni Valley and the Comox Lake area are featured.

The Greater Victoria Watersheds:
Sooke and Goldstream Creeks
This file, still under construction, holds a strange tale over the fate of these watersheds, directly primarily in the late 1940s when the assault on BC's drinking watersheds began in earnest.  In April 1994, the Supreme Court found the Water District guilty of illegal logging since operations began in 1948.


Portland City's Watershed: Bull Run (U.S.A.)
Nothing comes close to the intriguing battle against logging in the United States than the affairs of the U.S. Forest Service and the forest industry's illegal operations in the federal Bull Run Watershed Reserve, as found by the Court in 1976.  This file is still under construction, but has a wealth of newspaper article references.
Creston and Erickson's Watersheds
(Pdf - 1,319 kb)
November 11, 2008 - Letter to Forests & Range Minister Pat Bell
(Pdf - 474 kb)
Newspaper Articles 1984-2001
(Pdf - 7.54 Mb)
This report by Will Koop was originally provided on SPEC's (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation's) website (www.spec.bc.ca/spec/), and appears here with SPEC's permission.  It is a history of the fascinating conflicts between the Erickson Improvement District, in its struggle to protect the Arrow Creek Watershed Reserve, against the Ministry of Forests and the government's intentions to log it.  Logging recently began in late 2003.


Chilliwack City's
(now) Back-up Watershed:
Elk Creek

Elk Creek, one of Chilliwack City's three original small watershed water supply sources, which was used as early as 1905, later became a protected Watershed Reserve.  After a highly questionable finding of "tainted" water, the watershed was taken off line and remains a back-up supply.  However, long before the water source was removed, the Ministry of Forests did something secretly, by wrongly dedicating it to the harvestable land base.  Currently, there is a large looming controversy over the protection of this area, which has become an island of ecological importance amidst a sea of clearcuts and urbanization.