Environmental

by Eva van Loon

...are we doing?

BC Liberals just flew 5 planeloads of humans to Hudson’s Hope to deliver a news release.
Wouldn’t TV, Youtube, Facebook, or even old–fashioned newspapers or the steps of the Legislature have served? A single plane flight uses 3.5 years of an individual’s carbon emissions—who initialed this cost on poor old Earth’s carbon-balance sheet?

Must be some event, you’re thinking. Some earth-shaking, mind-bogglingly new approach to sustainability. A harbinger of a healthier long–term way to save our province from becoming industrial wasteland. Wow! Wish I were in Hudson. Hope for this!

Hearing the announcement on beleaguered CBC, I thought I’d been taking crazy pills. Gone partly deaf or missed April Fool’s. Or I’d slipped over into Alzheimer’s and was reliving the Seventies. Site C? They’re going ahead with that damned dam in the north? Again? Didn’t my generation win that battle 40 years ago?

Another battle ahead. Last year, 700 rivers proposed for exploitation. This year, Site C. The same tired justifications: “good” short-term jobs, steady resource base, future need—as if we can increase population without end. However, the PIPs (People in Power) are not so naive as in our longhaired days—every proposal is first greenwashed, so that it’s easier to make prudent questioners look like idiots.

I am sure that we are all capable of picking up a bag of litter a week in our neighborhoods. There have been studies done that show that the cleaner an environment the less likely there is to be a high crime rate. Living in a community we are all so proud of has the ability to be cleaner. The highway is one thing with the trucks going to the Dump from Savory or Lund and garbage flying off the truck. The streets downtown could use a few bending over citizens to pick up. In a city where the streets are clean, it’s more likely that the tourists will leave it that way. It’s so beautiful here in Paradise we owe it to the environment to keep tidying as we go. If anyone is interested in organizing a litter pick up from Lund to Savory lets put it together, for before Sea Fair and then again after. Powell Riverians are easy going but we are not lazy. Get a bag and go out picking till its full, its good for you the environment and community Spirit. The fairies like it too!

Love and Light Michelle Lea McCann

by Lesley Thorsell

I enjoy hiking, swimming and photography in our wild spaces. The Eldred Valley, an area I had always wanted to see, I decided to visit a few months ago. It was a surprise to be greeted by people in visi-vests and clipboards, to be followed up the road by large trucks, and to see on the roadside many cut trees, the entire way to the end of the road. Bulldozers moving the roots and debris were everywhere; massive pipes, and red tape with wildlife written on it strung across some trees. It was the furthest thing from that pretty picture of two people sitting in front of a waterfall (courtesy of Plutonic Power) that I have ever seen.

The same scenario is happening at Frieda Creek and Lake which, I understand, is our mayor’s favorite fishing hole.

As it sits right now, there are 119 water licenses approved and 545 applications for private water licenses in British Columbia. One project alone involves river diversion, dramatically reduced water flows, bridges, new roads, blasting, logging and toxic herbicide spraying to control growth under lines.

I am confused when reading the Premier’s B.C. Energy Plan. It says that 50% of B.C. Hydro’s incremental resource needs to come through conservation. Other sources would be bioenergy, geothermal, tidal, solar, wind and small run-of–river. From zero run-of-river projects to nearly 700? What are we going to do with all this excess energy?

The power production is at peak in the late spring and summer when our use for hydro is diminished, so what could we do with that power? The 1027-megawatt project for Bute Inlet is partnered with U.S. General Electric and would be connecting with the US/Canada power grid. Donald McInnes of Plutonic Power was quoted in The Tyee: “An export plan is an obvious way to go.”

A.S. Wretham

In communities across British Columbia, people are forming committees, writing letters, and talking to one another about the state of our province. They know that our very way of life is under attack. If you live in a rural area, you need drive only a few kilometers to see problems. If you are in a city, just read the newspaper–flooding, mudslides, and water pollution.

Our forests are being destroyed, our wildlife killed or starved to death, our water dirtied and diverted.

If you, as a taxpayer, want to complain about your once pristine, clean water being put on a “boil water” advisory, you are asked to prove that the clear-cut-logging company has caused the problem. It seems the company is obeying, and possibly exceeding, all our laws.

Ah, there’s the problem! The laws are wrong.

It isn’t the company that clear-cuts the forest within a few meters of a fish-bearing stream that is the problem. After all, it was determined by our government how close to the river logging could take place. The politicians made an error. They thought the forest would be OK if creeks and rivers were given just a 15-meter buffer zone of no logging.

We all know that we now have water-purity problems, caused by poor logging practices in our watersheds. We all know that the mudslides happening along the Sea-to-Sky Highway and everywhere else around the province are caused by poor logging practices. We all know that the huge increase in bears and cougars coming into our towns-- and usually being destroyed–is caused by poor logging practices. This is just common sense.

Can we prove it? Probably not. At the very least, it will take us years to prove it, and massive amounts of money for experts. Meanwhile, all the trees will be gone, the damage done.

by Brin Wilson

One of the first things that attracted me to BC was the tremendous range of trees as well as an abundant variety of them.

Personally, I love trees and there should be a law made by councils in towns and cities across the land to preserve trees on land, particularly crown land, but also some enactment to encourage people to grow trees wherever possible. The vast majority of the world is desert, whether cold or hot. There is a tremendous shortage of water worldwide and the loss of trees is a major reason for increasing deserts and aridity of land.

Coastal lands of the world are close to sources of water and the possibility is there for salt water to be converted to fresh by desalination. The rest of the problems can be taken care of through conservation and encouraging the growth of trees.

In parts of the prairies, wherever people have planted a windbreak, growth has been encouraged of both trees and bushes, thus increasing the water content in the soil.

Extreme conservation by large cities must be carried out as an increase of tree growth will indirectly neutralise industrial pollutants and reverse their effects.

It is up to us—we made the problem and we must also solve it.

Esther Dyck - Field Technician DFO

It is time for the logging company Island Timberlands to give back to our community.
The once beautiful Horseshoe River area has been devastated by Island Timberland’s lust for the almighty dollar.

This paradise was honoured and enjoyed by local Powell River Citizens. Horseshoe River was where I have personally taken my guests from Germany who were total awe of the beauty there, as I was.

Eagle River is known for its breathtaking raw beauty as a healthy destination for our young people here in Powell River, as well as tourists. This unique river is home to wild salmon, rainbow trout, cutthroat and more.

Water temperature increases when trees and native plants alongside rivers, streams and creeks are destroyed or removed, which means fish species then cannot survive. Natural habitat when removed or disturbed leaves that river, creek or stream open to flash floods. These flash floods rip up salmon redds and brings destructive silt which suffocates all fish species as well as their food source.

After the majority of trees are ripped down alongside rivers, creeks and streams, the logging companies give themselves credit for leaving a so called buffer zone. The stronger winds we now experience leave the remaining trees (the buffer zone) vulnerable and unprotected. The buffer zone is only a false front and is morally wrong.

Myrtle Creek is the only full “indicator creek” on this side of the coast that is monitoring the ocean- and fresh-water survival of the wild diverse run of Coho salmon.

There is really something wrong with us to allow our resources to be destroyed and then shipped in raw form out of our community for the almighty dollar.