WATER NEWS
Laurel Street Store Opening!
August 26th, 2008watermatters will open its new store in early September at 2539 Laurel St in Vancouver, located one block east of Oak St between West Broadway and 10th Ave. We look ... More »
Archives by Month
The Future of Water
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River World
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Journey down some of the world’s most spectacular waterways by visiting River World, a website promoting river conservation around the world.
From the Nile to the Yangtze, from the Amazon to the Fraser, follow renowned Canadian paddler and conservationist Mark Angelo as he explores the successes and threats surrounding many great rivers.
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Is Your River For Sale?
Friday, May 30th, 2008Learn about the outrageous give-away of BC’s most precious assets.
See all water licenses across BC.
Click on each dot for details!Check out the Wilderness Committee’s video guide to river privatization.
Take Action!
Stand up with these organizations to save BC rivers:
Save Our Rivers
Western Wilderness Committee
Public Power BC
Burke Mountain Naturalists -
North America Says NO to Bottled Water
Saturday, April 12th, 2008Community Protests, Slowing Market Hang Over Nestlé Shareholders’ Meeting
BOSTON - April 10 - Today in Lausanne, Switzerland, Nestlé executives and shareholders’ had the opportunity to reflect on a year that has been marked by a growing antipathy toward the corporation’s signature product – bottled water.
Community protests over water rights have stymied Nestlé’s attempts in North America to secure new water sources for bottled water brands like Poland Spring. Just this week BusinessWeek documented one town’s struggles in A Town Torn Apart by Nestlé. This coverage comes on the heels of major congressional hearings that have called into question Nestlé’s bottling practices at sites across the country.
North American campaigns to wean cities, restaurants, and other establishments from bottled water, such as Think Outside the Bottle, also appear to be taking their toll on Nestlé’s sales. In the recent article, Nestle Loses Sales as Alice Waters Bans Bottled Water, Bloomberg reported that Nestlé water unit’s operating profit growth will shrink by half in 2008. The backdrop to this is an overall downturn in market growth in the United States.
“When other businesses, including world-class restaurants, begin pointing to Nestlé products as wasteful, bad for the environment, and unnecessary, it doesn’t paint the rosiest picture for investors,” said Gigi Kellett, national director for Think Outside the Bottle, a campaign of Corporate Accountability International. “Nestlé can use its shareholders’ meeting to start explaining how it will stop practices that involve strong-arming communities out of their most precious resource.”
Corporate Accountability International is calling on Nestlé to:
- reveal the sources and sites of the water used for bottling;
- publicly report breaches in bottled water quality comparable to reports by public water system;
- and stop threatening local control of water when siting and operating bottled water plants
In concert with Nestlé’s annual shareholders’ meeting, Corporate Accountability International has launched a website dedicated to exposing Nestlé abuses.
The website provides a link to a Polaris Institute map of North American bottling sites and documents three community struggles including:
Fryeburg, Maine. Locals call the water source the Ward’s Brook Aquifer, but the end product is called Poland Spring. The bottling plant’s impact on the aquifer has 90-year-old Howard Dearborn and his neighbors waging a campaign to return Fryeburg’s water to public control. Read the story.
Mecosta County, Michigan. When Nestlé wanted to build a bottling plant on the shores of a wildlife sanctuary, locals said enough is enough. But the corporation is challenging the community’s right to protect this valued natural area and the essential resource that lies beneath it. Read the story.
For more information on Think Outside the Bottle, community struggles, and for facts about bottled water, visit their site.
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SOURCE: Corporate Accountability International
Nick Guroff 617-447-2507
Sara Joseph 617-447-2527 -
Save the Upper Pitt River Valley from Private Power Projects
Friday, March 14th, 2008History of the Upper Pitt River
Only a few kilometres northeast of Greater Vancouver lies a spectacular valley with magnificent waterfalls, hot springs, splendid scenery and wild salmon in abundance. Accessible only by boat, the Upper Pitt River Valley at the north end of Pitt Lake has escaped many of the typical development pressures. Even today, this valley hosts only a handful of full-time residents. While logging has occurred in the lower valley for over a century, the upper elevations of the Upper Pitt River Valley are protected within three provincial parks - Pinecone-Burke, Garibaldi and Golden Ears on the west, north and east, respectively. The establishment of Pinecone-Burke Provincial Park in 1995 was supported by thousands of residents in the lower mainland.In the late 1990s, the threat of a gravel mine lead to the designation of the Upper Pitt as BC’s most endangered river in 2000. Thankfully, the government of the day responded to concerns and stopped the mine. Now, the Upper Pitt faces a far graver threat from a large cluster of hydro projects in which an unprecedented eight tributaries of the Upper Pitt River would be diverted to produce electricity and a transmission line carved through pristine wilderness in Pinecone Burke Provincial Park.
Situated in the heart of Katzie First Nation territory, the Upper Pitt valley is remarkably rich in its wild salmon and wilderness-dependent species. It supports the largest remaining wild coho population in the lower Fraser and has a unique race of sockeye that take up to 6 years to mature. It provides valuable habitat for all species of Pacific salmon plus steelhead, cutthroat trout, Dolly Varden and the largest population of bull trout remaining in the lower mainland. The Upper Pitt River Valley attracts grizzly bears, wolves, marbled murrelets, wolverine and mountain goats. Because of its remoteness and habitat values, government biologists selected the Upper Pitt Valley for the re-introduction of elk in 2004. Today, the elk are thriving.
The Proposed Private Power Project
The Upper Pitt hydro proposal from Northwest Cascade Power, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Run of River, Inc.) is a very large 180 MW (megawatt) cluster of 7 powerhouses. To be approved, this project will require an Environmental Assessment and deletion of land from Pinecone Burke for a 42 km transmission line to Squamish. Key decisions from the provincial government are anticipated as early as spring, 2008. Because Pinecone Burke Park was established by legislation, a boundary change will require a vote in the provincial Legislature. Public information sessions have been scheduled (see BC parks website, bottom of next page or www.bmn.bc.ca). The Environmental Assessment process is expected to open for public comment on the draft Terms of Reference in spring, 2008 (see www.eao.gov.bc.ca, current projects, Upper Pitt). Because complete information regarding this project has not yet been released, some of the information below may be subject to change.Shockingly, the proposed Upper Pitt “run-of-river” projects would divert all major tributaries of the Upper Pitt River that lie outside of park boundaries. It is an unprecedented high-density cluster of river diversions that would have a heavy impact on this small valley. Within only a short 12 km stretch of the river, eight creeks would be diverted, in part, and seven powerhouses constructed. These creeks include Boise, Homer, Pinecone, Steve and Bucklin Creeks on the west side of the Upper Pitt River plus Corbold, a tributary of Corbold and Shale on the east. The portions of their headwaters that are outside of park boundaries will be dammed and reservoirs constructed. In total, over 30 km of creeks will lose a substantial portion of their flows. These power projects typically result in diversion of 80-95% of the mean annual discharge of a creek. The Upper Pitt River is internationally renowned for its abundant wild salmon. It’s hard to imagine a more inappropriate place for eight river diversion projects.
Astonishingly, creek diversions and powerhouse construction are proposed within aquatic habitat used by ocean-migrating salmon in four of the eight creeks despite the fact that important coho and chinook spawning areas are found in lower reaches. Boise Creek, reported to be highly sensitive to low water winter flows, supports a unique hybrid of Dolly Varden/bull trout which are present throughout the entire reach of the creek proposed for diversion. In particular, any disturbance to this creek is totally unacceptable.
In addition to impacts on fish habitat, considerable construction will be required on public land. New roads, powerhouses, intake structures, transmission lines, gravel pits and penstocks to carry water are anticipated to cover more than a hundred hectares of land in the valley. Transmission lines and roads will require forest clearing and creek crossings. Construction will remove some of the protective cover of riparian forest along the creeks. Such construction in the Upper Pitt River Valley, with its steep mountainous terrain and heavy rainfall and snowstorm events, could lead to blocked culverts, road failures, landslides and damage to salmon habitat.
Threats to Pinecone Burke and our Provincial Park System
The electricity generated is proposed to be taken from the valley to Squamish on a transmission line that would cross a remote 4.6 km portion of pristine wilderness in Pinecone Burke, a Class A Provincial Park. Construction of a transmission line through pristine wilderness in a Class A Park is unprecedented; in fact, it is prohibited under the BC Parks Act. Fears are high that deletion of land from Pinecone Burke will set a new precedent for industrial intrusions into other provincial parks and protected areas. Why is the provincial government even allowing the consideration of such an illegal industrial activity in a Class A Park?Deletion of land from Pinecone Burke Park could interfere with wildlife movement from wilderness areas in Garibaldi Park to southern portions of Pinecone Burke Park and the adjoining protected Coquitlam drinking watershed. The Steve Creek corridor contains sensitive wetlands and critical grizzly bear habitat – the transmission line is proposed to go straight through this area. The proponents propose to “compensate” for the deletion of this land from a Class A Park by adding what appears to be mostly a high elevation rocky ridge to the Park. In addition to crossing what is now Class A protected wilderness, the transmission line would go straight through the most valuable habitat within the proposed addition - what sort of “park addition” would that be? An additional concern is that, once constructed, transmission lines become beacons that attract inappropriate use such as ATVs and snowmobiles into pristine habitat used by wilderness-dependent species.
Do We Need Low-Value High-Cost Electricity from Private Projects?
Despite its high environmental and financial costs, the electricity produced by run-of-river projects is considered low-value because it can be supplied only on an intermittent basis. Little electricity will be produced in winter when high elevation intakes are frozen - yet this is our period of highest electricity consumption in BC. A report recently released by BC Hydro indicates conservation initiatives alone could result in electricity consumption in 2027 being no greater than what it is at present. Clearly, conservation – not environmental destruction - is the best way to meet our future energy needs.There many reasons why such a large cluster of hydro projects is unacceptable in a special place like the Upper Pitt River Valley. While the Upper Pitt is a particularly egregious example, hundreds of rivers are now threatened with similar diversion projects. The provincial government currently has no management strategy to identify which sites could be suitable for energy projects and which, such as the Upper Pitt River Valley, are totally inappropriate. With no overall planning, BC’s remote wilderness areas are likely to become covered in a web of overlapping and redundant private transmission lines…all of which will only increase our electricity costs.
Your Help is Urgently Needed to Protect Pinecone Burke Park!
Comments from the public are being solicited until April 2 (midnight) on the proposed park boundary change. Please, stand up for our parks and say no to the proposed change in this park boundary. Stopping the transmission line could present a serious impediment to the entire project.Please submit your comments to
PineconeBurke@gov.bc.caor mail them to
Boundary Change Pinecone Burke
c/o BC Parks
PO Box 9398
Stn. Prov. Govt.
Victoria, BC, V8W 9M9or fax to
1-250-387-5757.For more details see
Pitt River Projects
or
BC Parks.Produced by the Burke Mountain Naturalists, Coquitlam
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Stand Up for our BC Rivers - Tuesday, March 25th
Friday, March 14th, 2008A private power project is proposed for the Upper Pitt River valley, and a power line right-of-way is proposed to be cleared through Pinecone Burke Provincial Park just outside of Vancouver.
Located just 40 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, the Upper Pitt River valley is a remarkable place with hot springs and waterfalls.
This area is renowned worldwide for its wild salmon and majestic wildlife, including grizzly bears, wolverines and mountain goats.
A private company, Northwest Cascade Power, is proposing a massive 180 Megawatt private hydro project in the Upper Pitt River. This power project would involve:
- diverting all 8 of the major tributaries of the Upper Pitt River system into 30 kilometres of large pipes, then running them through 7 powerhouses to produce electricity
- clearcutting a network of power line corridors throughout the Upper Pitt Valley
- ramming a power line right through the northern portion of Pinecone Burke Provincial Park
SHOW UP at the final and most urgent Open House Public Meeting for public comment to STOP this project.
This important meeting will take place in Pitt Meadows as follows:
Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows - RECONVENED!
Tuesday March 25th
4 PM to 9 PM. Question and Answer sessions are from 6.30-8.30 pm.
Pitt Meadows Secondary School
19438 116B Avenue (at the corner of Blakely Road, a few blocks south of the Lougheed Hwy.)
Pitt Meadows, BCGet on the bus!
The Wilderness Committee will be providing free buses to the Tuesday, March 25th public meeting in Pitt Meadows. Bus riders will be provided a sandwich, so please RSVP so we know how many to bring. Bus pick-ups will be at Waterfront Station and Braid SkyTrain station. For details and to reserve a place on the bus, please call 604-683-8220, or email.
SPEAK UP by mail or email.
The comment period for the public to voice their concern is only open until April 2, 2008.
Please take 10 minutes to submit your comments to:Boundary Change Pinecone Burke
c/o BC Parks
PO Box 9398, Stn. Prov. Govt.
Victoria, BC, V8W 9M9
fax 1-250-387-5757
PineconeBurke@gov.bc.caRead more information .
Watch “Power Play”.