Hon. Colin Hansen,
Minister of Health Services,
Parliament Buildings, Victoria.

Re: The Minister’s claims on October 10th concerning the state of B.C.’s drinking water sources

Dear Minister Hansen,

    We are completely dismayed by the remarks from the Minister of Health Services made on October 10, 2002 in response to questions from the opposition leader - contained in Hansard for the third session of the 37th Parliament - that water contamination in provincial drinking water sources “over the last 20 years” resulted from wildlife, and not from “industrial activity”.  By stating such, the Minister reveals that his advisors not only hold the citizens of British Columbia in utter contempt but they are also apparently unconcerned about the Minister’s credibility on this issue.

    It would appear that the Minister was ill informed when he mistakenly equated “wildlife” with domesticated cattle, and by his suggestion that “contamination” problems in drinking water sources did not somehow occur prior to 1982.  For more that forty years the provincial government has issued Crown land cattle grazing permits in hundreds of drinking water sources in British Columbia against the best interests of water users.  Many of these concerns were recently reported on by three separate processes: two reports from the Forest Practices Board in 2002; the 2001 and 2002 public review processes for the Drinking Water Protection Act; and the March 1999 Auditor General’s report on drinking water protection.  Over the last forty years, hundreds of letters from concerned water users to government were referenced in numerous internal memos, correspondence, and ministry reports.  In relation to these concerns, we would like the Minister to provide us with his Ministry’s documentation and reports that support the claim that wildlife has been solely responsible for water contamination.

    Moreover, the Minister is playing down the degradation and consequent pollution of provincial drinking water sources, which is attributable to other industrial resource activities over the last 42 years.  These activities, which include logging and mining, are responsible for degraded water requiring treatment, which has proven to be very costly for taxpayers.  We would remind the Minister that he has only to examine his government’s eight year long review process regarding the public’s drinking water sources that began in February 1972.  Drinking sources were not only shown to be degraded through government resource management policies, but government also established hundreds of Land Act “watershed reserves” in response to the problem.

    If the forests had been protected, as the public has demanded for many decades, our drinking water problems would be almost non-existent, and the public would not be picking up the tab for treatment and rehabilitation costs.  By making wildlife the scapegoat, the Minister is masking the truth and denying that the collective damages to drinking water sources are attributable to government policy.  As a result, the Minister is continuing to do what government has conscientiously done for more than forty years - ignore the public - in support of the status quo.

    As the Minister will remember, we met with him to discuss these matters three months ago on the afternoon of July 30, 2002.  Prior to our meeting, we had provided a listing of our reports and press releases describing the controversial history of logging and cattle grazing in drinking water sources.  During the meeting, we:

(a) notified the Minister, when he began to table concerns about “wildlife”, that he was not considering or cognisant of the manifold problems related to cattle in drinking water sources, and that wildlife did not pose the problems he suggested.  We then provided the Minister with a copy of our June 30, 2002 report to the Results Based Code Panel, which contained our comments regarding cattle in drinking water sources.  The report mentions that there are cattle in over 250 community watersheds.
(b) complained to the Minister that his Department’s 2000 report on Drinking Water Sources provided incorrect information to the public about a variety of related issues.  We also provided the Minister with a copy of our May 15, 2002 report, Doctoring Our Water, a critique of the Provincial and Deputy Health Officers’ report on Drinking Water Sources.  It also contains the history of the Ministry of Health as former guardian of provincial drinking water sources.  It was apparent at our meeting that the Minister took a keen interest in our report.
(c) challenged the Minister when he stated that even a protected watershed is unreliable.  The Minister based his argument on information in his Department’s 2000 annual report that turbidity in the Greater Vancouver watersheds was not attributable to logging, because, he claimed, the watersheds had not been logged!  We couldn’t understand how the Minister, as a resident of Vancouver, was unaware of the fact that the Greater Vancouver watersheds were being logged for almost 30 years.  We then explained to the Minister that this information was false.  We then provided the Minister with a November 1, 1999 copy of Silty Sources, a history of the logging in the Greater Vancouver watersheds.
(d) recommended to the Minister in our follow up letter of August 1, 2002, that his Department correct and rewrite the 2000 Annual Report on Drinking Water Sources.

    Since June 2001, government has initiated significant and publicly unsolicited changes to the role of government ministries with regard to community and domestic watersheds. These watersheds have not only been assigned to the newly formed Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management, but government also undertook related initiatives over the summer of 2001 to provide the Ministry of Forests with unfettered powers over these water sources.  Bill 35, of May 2002, legislated the exclusion of former Ministry of Environment officials.  To compound these problems, government is proposing troublesome amendments to the Forest and Forest Practices Code Acts.  How does the Minister think his Ministry will be able to protect drinking water when it has not been provided with legislated authority to protect the sources?

    Finally, drastic changes to Bill 61 are required.  Bill 61, the Drinking Water Protection Amendment Act, still avoids what British Columbians have requested for more than forty years - legislative protection of their drinking water sources.  For instance, on October 10, the leader of the opposition, Hon. Joy MacPhail, read to you an account of a petition and related referendum of May 2, 1998, for the protection of the Chapman and Gray Creek community watershed reserves on the Sunshine Coast.  It is shameful and embarrassing that the government refuses to act in good faith about the Sunshine Coast Regional District’s request.  This same request was also denied in 1973, just prior to government’s approval of logging plans that caused extensive damage to the SCRD’s drinking water sources.  We urge you to work with Cabinet to legislate the protection of these sources.  By doing so, you will demonstrate to British Columbians that you have heard their concerns.

Sincerely, Will Koop, Coordinator.

cc.  Hon. Gordon Campbell, Premier
      Hon. Joy MacPhail, Opposition Leader
      Hon. Joyce Murray, Minister of Water, Land, and Air Protection
      Union of B.C. Municipalities
      Sunshine Coast Regional District
      B.C. Medical Association
      Green Party of B.C.
      Media