Flood warnings unheeded

When NDP forests and range critic Bob Simpson saw the high February snowpack in his Cariboo North constituency, he said he "raised the alarm" about the elevated risk of flooding in the Fraser Basin.

Simpson told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that he sent out a news release to get the B.C. Liberals to "raise the profile of the issue" in general and specifically as it involves "the combination of the high snowpack and the mountain pine beetle".

"The forest minister's comments in the Prince George Citizen were [that] I must get out of bed every morning wondering how I can be Chicken Little,?" Simpson said of the response from Forests and Range Minister Rich Coleman.

Simpson's February 8 release noted that the Campbell government had developed no "strategic harvesting plan that would take into account the mountain pine beetle impacts on hydrology". He said he worried the increased snowpack would melt and flow straight into the Fraser Basin "without the moderating effects of living forest ecosystems". In other words, if too many trees were cut down too quickly, melted snow could flow much more rapidly into the Fraser River and its tributaries.

At a March 19 press conference, the provincial Forest Practices Board released results of a study on the effects of the beetle attack and salvage harvesting on streamflows in the Baker Creek watershed west of Quesnel. It showed that the beetle epidemic will increase streamflows by 60 percent and that clearcut salvage logging in the area could elevate streamflows by up to 92 percent.

The watchdog agency's board chair, Bruce Fraser, told reporters that government and industry need to implement preventative measures to avert a flood threat. His findings dovetailed with concerns raised by Simpson.

"More fundamentally, we need to consider hydrological impacts when planning harvesting in watersheds impacted by the beetle epidemic," Fraser said.

The FPB used a computer model to demonstrate that 20-year flood levels can be expected every three years once the forest cover is removed in Baker Creek, which is a tributary to the Fraser River.

"There are no longer attempts to stem the infestation in this area," Simpson said. "There is some infilling going on, but most of the damage has been done. It's only when you go out to the Peace River and the Alberta border that we can slow or undermine the actual spread of the beetle."

Simpson alleged that one reason Coleman is so hesitant to implement a strategy is because B.C. Liberals are beholden to major corporate-forestry interests and political donations from 2005. "Go look at the B.C. Competition Council report—it was only the corporations that were engaged in that," Simpson said. "So in all of their approaches in trying to reposition the industry, only the corporate voice was heard. The donations bought access."

Green Party of Canada deputy leader Adriane Carr told the Straight that she believes current forestry policy "is influenced by the big companies".

"They are in the backrooms with the Liberals determining policy, and it's making them money," she said. "And it's ruining our forest space."

Coleman did not return messages by Straight deadline.

In the leadup to the 2005 provincial election, eight forest companies contributed more than $50,000 each to B.C. Liberal coffers: West Fraser Mills ($127,990), International Forest Products ($101,690), Canadian Forest Products ($68,850), Sauder Industries ($57,500), Hayes Forest Service Ltd. ($56,000), Tolko Industries Ltd. ($52,990), Pope & Talbot Inc. ($50,000), and Weyerhaeuser Canada Ltd. ($50,000.)

"Policy should not wait for and reward the companies that wait to harvest once the trees are dead," Carr said. "That was the big mistake to begin with. Now they [the B.C. Liberals] are rewarding companies to take out the red-and-dead trees."

Will Koop, coordinator of the BC Tap Water Alliance, wrote an opinion piece in the Straight earlier this month warning of the higher risk of a major flood from rapid logging of beetle-infested forests in the Fraser Basin. Koop's article pointed out that the forest canopy slows the melting of snow, resulting in a more even runoff. "What the Forest Practices Board is saying here is really serious," Koop told the Straight after the news conference.