BC Timber Sales has released the latest Hydrology report on the slopes of Mt. Elphinstone. (Link to Report) Note that this is also available in the March 23, 2023 SCRD COW agenda. (Large PDF.) If you’re not up for all 200+ pages, I recommend that you start with Conclusions on page 139.
July 14, 2023 Update: The final version of this report is available HERE.
The good news: This is a far more in depth report than anything that’s been done before. The mapping of our creeks is first rate, and there is a lot of very good data.
The bad news: This will be used to justify clear cut logging on the slopes of the mountain that will result in more runoff added to an already dire stormwater situation, especially in the Chaster Creek watershed.
On March 22 and 23 I attended three presentations by the hydrologists of the report’s findings, and made comments to them at the SCRD’s Committee of the Whole. (see below)
BC Timber Sales will hold an online engagement meeting over Zoom at 6:00 pm, Thursday, April 6th , 2023 to present the report and its recommendations.
And I’d like to give a big thank you to the Elphinstone Community Association for the great letter in the Coast Reporter, and to all the community volunteers who have contributed to ongoing efforts to protect Chaster Creek.
My Comments on the Hydrology Report
Thank you for coming today. This is a very valuable report, with outstanding mapping and other data, and we will be referring back to it in years to come. I’m quite familiar with the slopes of Mount Elphinstone, because I hike up there all the time. But this report really sharpened my awareness of the complexity and fragility of the creeksheds on the mountain.
I have a number of quibbles about content, most of which have already been raised by local residents. Some significant drainage from the Town into Chaster Creek is missing from the maps. The well data is wrong—no fault of the consultants, because the province’s online well data is wildly inaccurate and outdated. And the condition of the lower two kilometres of Chaster Creek is worse than the consultants reported. Streamkeepers have been documenting landslides in the ravine as recently as two weeks ago.
I’d like to point out that BC Timber Sales is not the villain of this story. Many organizations, both public and private, have contributed to the deteriorated condition of our watersheds. BCTS is one of the few that’s required to do public consultation. For example, I have never seen the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure in a public meeting defending their decisions about subdivision approval, road building, creek diversion, or deteriorating culverts.
Chaster Creek flooding the Chaster House footbridge on Nov. 15, 2021.
When it comes to Mt. Elphinstone, BCTS is a relative latecomer to the out-of-control party that’s trashing the house. However that’s not an excuse for making a bad situation worse. Peak flows in Chaster Creek are already far above historical levels and causing damage, so why would we even consider adding more runoff?
And who will end up holding the bag if things go bad? Many parties are authorized to make land use decisions that affect our watershed, and not one of them is responsible for the results. Who paid for the 2020 washout of Lower Road? Taxpayers and the individual homeowners whose property was damaged. If BC Timber Sales is wrong in their risk assessment, will they be on the hook to fix resulting damages? No. We will.
My other big concern is that environmental conditions are changing, and they are changing very very fast. We need to apply the lessons we’ve been learning the hard way in the Chapman Creek watershed to the situation on Mount Elphinstone. Repeated droughts have affected the soil and the recharge of groundwater. Last fall staff reported significant changes in the behaviour of the Chapman Creek hydrology, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
Mature trees knocked down like matchsticks near Langdale Creek, Nov. 2022.
Those droughts are also stressing the forests, increasing our risk of fire, and making weakened trees vulnerable to extensive blowdowns, such as those that occurred around Soames and Hopkins during the wind storm last November.
The BC Timber Sales tenure on Mt. Elphinstone is a key area for the recharge of the aquifers that provide an increasing portion of the drinking water supply to our community. That area should be protected as a community watershed, and it’s the province that has the power to make that happen, as well as to make sweeping changes to forestry policies and practices that have been needed for a long time.
We all have parts to play. The report recommends on page 138 that we should have a watershed management strategy that brings all the players to the table, including First Nations, provincial ministries, federal fisheries, local governments, and private property owners. This is certainly needed.
And we need to look at all the tools in our regional district toolkit that can be used not only to halt new damage to our creeksheds, but to start actively restoring the developed areas of our watershed.
