Wetland Alliance: The Ecological Response (WA-TER) 2.18

Our work involves gathering scientific information and traditional aboriginal knowledge about the Salmon River Delta in Salmon Arm, B.C., and using this knowledge to protect and preserve this area.

This area it contains one of the richest and most valuable ecosystems in the southern part of BC. It is officially called the Black Cottonwood/Snowberry ecosystem. Because of the close association between land and water throughout this site, the animal and plant life in this area is far richerthan in most other areas of the Southern Interior.

Furthermore, this type of ecosystem is severely threatened by development activities. Only 5% of it remains throughout all of southern BC, and only in small scattered patches.

In the last few years commercial development pressures have led to intense interest in the Delta of the Salmon River as a place to build. However before any building can take place in such a sensitive area, there should be a clear understanding of the science of the Delta, as well as its cultural significance to our First Nations friends and neighbours – who still live in the Salmon River floodplain. In addition, it is important for governments at all levels -- federal, provincial and municipal -- to live up to their responsibility to protect it.

To be specific, one very large shopping center developer has wanted to build in the floodplain of the Salmon River for the last five years. The law has required that this developer hire a Qualified Environmental Professional (QEP)** to analyze the natural features of the floodplain, and recommend whether or not to build. Unfortunately, the two QEP's hired by the developer didn't do a very good job. They said that the Salmon River almost never overflowed its banks, and therefore said that there was no "active floodplain". If this were actually true, then the floodplain would not contain fish habitat. (Fish habitat next to a salmon-bearing stream like the Salmon River is defined as land that is flooded at least once every five years.) Because the QEP's said that the land flooded only rarely if at all, their report caused the Ministry of Environment (see footnote #1) to say that the developer could build up close to the edge of the river (a mere 30 paces away).

In fact this area floods very regularly, as First Nations people have known for hundreds of years! It probably floods more often than every five years – and so it turns out that most of the land included in the original proposed shopping center was actually fish habitat. That means that young salmon coming downstream leave the river and swim out into the flooded landscape, feeding aggressively and gaining weight rapidly before swimming back either into the river or across the floodplain, using old River channels, into the nearby lake.

On December 1, 2009, after months of input from scientists working with our group, the Ministry of Environment finally accepted the gross inaccuracy of the QEP's report, and asked the professionals to re-examine the information in it.This took place. They "suggested" that the developer consult with a scientist very experienced in water movements in a floodplain. He confirmed what our group had been saying all along. As a result, the size of the proposed shopping center was reduced from 38 acres to 22 acres, a reduction of over 40%.

Environmental protection in BC only exists for fish habitat (and even that is weak). Our initial work involved this successful challenge of the developer's environmental information. The resulting plan, however, still puts the Salmon River Delta and its diverse and important ecology at significant risk.

Not only that, but the important functions of the floodplain itself – to slow down spring runoff and spread it out over a longer period of time, and to filter and cleanse water that enters into Shuswap Lake – will be affected by any development taking place within it. The City of Salmon Arm draws its drinking water from Shuswap Lake, directly across from the mouth of the Salmon River.

Up to the present time, there has never been any scientific study of past, present or future water movement in the floodplain of the Salmon River. A lot is known about flooding risks in floodplains, but that knowledge has never been applied to this site.

WA:TER continues to actively learn about the Salmon River Delta area. We are committed to finding every bit of available evidence that will ensure that any development in this area respects the natural values of the Salmon River Delta and honours our commitment to our own and especially to future generations.

From the very beginning, our group has worked very closely with the First Nations communities in this area. We value this close relationship, because it has enabled us to better understand this area by seeing it through the eyes of people who have lived here for thousands of years. Their knowledge and understanding has had a major influence over the way we have seen scientific knowledge about the Delta and the floodplain. Without their help and support, our work would have been entirely incomplete.

**A Qualified Environmental Professional (QEP) is a person who has taken a three day course set up by Vancouver Island University. The person must already be a registered professional in a field that has some sort of relationship to the environment, such as biology, forestry or engineering. The course teaches the professional person how to carry out an assessment of land which is related to water, such as a wetland, the banks of a river, a floodplain, or the shoreline of a lake or the ocean. This assessment is carried out using a set of rules created under a provincial system called the Riparian Areas Regulation (RAR). The RAR is a set of guidelines designed for this purpose by the BC Ministry of Environment. These guidelines are not legally binding, and as long as the QEP follows the assessment rules under the RAR (that is to say, he or she dots every "i" and crosses every "t") then the assessment is hardly ever checked to see if it is correct.