The B.C. Wildlife Federation is calling for a 2023 gravel proposal on the Vedder River near Chilliwack to be “immediately deferred” and the massive scale of it be reconsidered.
The proposal to remove 360,000 cubic metres of gravel is for a two-kilometre stretch in the Vedder River, between July and September 2023, for flood prevention purposes for Chilliwack and Abbotsford.
If approved, it would be the largest sediment removal from Chilliwack in history.
“We have salmon and steelhead struggling mightily, as well as the fact it’s a pink salmon year,” said BCWF executive director Jesse Zeman. “The fish really can’t afford this.”
It’s not the first time a Vedder River gravel proposal has set off alarm bells for conservation-minded groups, like BCWF.
“This commercial aggregate harvesting project is unprecedented in scale and carries significant risk of damage to pink salmon rearing habitat, along with the potential for massive erosion of the stream bed and large-scale sediment movement,” a letter from BCWF to provincial officials stated.
Zeman said there are several B.C. groups working to repair the effects of “unsustainable or poorly considered resource extraction” around critical salmon-bearing streams, of which this is an example.
At the very least, the BCWF rep said, the project should be put on hold until a non-pink spawning year.
Last year’s Vedder approvals were for only for 125,000 cubic metres, with a smaller amount actually taken by contractors. City of Chilliwack officials said last September that the heavy atmospheric river storms of 2021 had washed into the Vedder an estimated 440,000 cubic metres of sediment.
But the extraction volume just doesn’t track with all the efforts to try to save declining salmon stocks.
“The volume of gravel proposed for removal is insane,” Zeman said. “We have the feds and the province saying salmon is important, with salmon restoration projects underway. While we definitely have to protect private and public property, this looks more to be about financial gain. With plans to build the pipeline, the Terminal 2 project, now gravel extraction, there’s no way to square the equation as it relates to a future with salmon.”
Dr. Marvin L. Rosenau, a BCIT fisheries instructor, pointed out that gravel removal on this scale has never been authorized during a pink salmon spawning year.
He posits that Vedder River is still “over-extracted” despite the heavy influx after the heavy rain two years ago.
The Vedder system is already “largely” flood-proofed to a 1:200 year flood level, with the exception of a section near the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve.
He takes it a step further.
“This is the biggest gravel grab in the history of the Vedder,” Rosenau said. “We would support it if it was meaningful in a flood prevention sense. But this is pure environment violence, or rape. It’s not a true flood issue, it’s gravel extraction for construction that all it is.”
Rosenau said he used to be able to easy obtain reports or studies to analyze the substantiation for gravel removal when a project is up for approval. Those reports are being hidden now, he said, and he had to submit a freedom of information request to try to access the report information.
This work is commonly referred to as “gravel removal,” but technically the gravel is only one component of sediment, a word which can encompass everything from boulders to silt. Traditionally they’ve taken sediment from the Vedder River and Canal, a practice that had been underway every two years for flood prevention purposes for Chilliwack and Abbotsford.
The Vedder River Management Area Committee has been the body that has historically planned and designed sediment removals from the Vedder River and Canal to maintain floodway capacity and flood prevention since 1983. The committee has reps from City of Chilliwack, City of Abbotsford, BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MFLNRO), and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
Sediment removal from the Vedder was conducted in 2016. It became an issue in 2018, when the practice was put on hold for two years.
Gravel proposals for 2020 were contested by the Fraser River Salmon Society leadership which wrote letters to provincial and federal authorities, arguing there was no defensible flood-protection argument when balanced with the environmental damage the work would cause. The salmon advocates predicted sediment removal would damage and destroy fish habitat. Applications were withdrawn by the Vedder River Management Area Committee.
RELATED: Gravel plan failed to get approvals in 2018
RELATED: Gravel removal put on hold in 2020
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