ADAM OLSEN -- We need less talk and more action ... we need more restraint and more political willingness to protect our watersheds.

Ben Parfitt's Narwhal article "Muddied Waters: how clearcut logging is driving a water crisis in B.C.’s interior", has been open in my web browser for a few weeks. I finally read it on my way home from my recent trip to the Comox Valley.

The story is about unsustainable logging practices in watersheds — specifically, watersheds that are providing communities across British Columbia with their drinking water. 

Parfitt's story revolves around the rapid decline of the water quality in Peachland. It opens with long-time resident Richard Smith's account of the pristine local water quality when he moved there in 1947. Over the past decade, the situation has changed - drastically. Now Peachland is on the hook for building a $24 million water treatment facility.

So how does immaculate water become a murky, turbid mess causing boil water advisories so quickly? As many in the story highlight, the problem is the forestry practices. Despite supposed provincial government protections for community drinking water sources going back to the 19th century, the Ministry of Forests ignored the long-standing advice and the forests around Peachland's watershed have been allowed to be devastated.

New Peachland reservoir waiting for
the concrete truck and pouring the

north wall of the upper reservoir

Increasing cost of unrestraint

A common theme in my work as an MLA and former municipal councillor is the growing infrastructure deficit - the inability for communities, and our province, to keep up with maintaining and repairing aging infrastructure and building new infrastructure. Now, Peachland, a town of 5,500 people is expending millions of dollars to build a facility to process water that nature was doing better.

Why? Because the provincial forestry policy has no restraint.

Timing is everything. Parfitt's story is a disturbing confirmation of the story I heard several times (in just a few days) in the Comox Valley. In November 2018, the province announced a $125 million water treatment facility to clean up turbid water from the valley's drinking water source, Comox Lake.

The Cumberland Community Forest initiative is working to protect the forests in the watersheds surrounding Cumberland, BC. Ironically, the forests they want to save from logging is the source of the drinking water for Courtenay and Comox but not Cumberland itself. Cumberland's water comes from another lake outside of the few hundred hectares they are fundraising to purchase.

However, they recognize that the entire watershed, forests, lakes, creeks, streams and rivers are all part of the same integrated system, a reality that is apparently lost on the provincial government.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little difference in approach on this issue between the former BC Liberals and current BC NDP governments.

Playing catch-up

Finally, it's important to put a little perspective on the costs of our decisions. While the federal and provincial politicians are scrambling to cut ribbons on more than $150 million dollars in announcements for unnecessary facilities saving two communities from poor resource management decisions by the forest ministry, other politicians are bristling with pride about a $142 million investment in protecting, enhancing and studying wild salmon across British Columbia.

Apparently, nobody is making the connection.

Like the ancient trees that move so many British Columbians, issues about forests and fish in British Columbia are some of the oldest and most complex of any issue we deal with. Frustrating factors around private and Crown land, tree-cutting licenses and stumpage rates make this an incredibly difficult policy area to navigate.

While the provincial government is engaging and consulting British Columbians about forestry policy, loggers and community activists are telling me what they told Parfitt.

We need less talk and more action.

We need more restraint and more political willingness to protect our watersheds.

Protecting drinking water should be a priority.

Had we taken the advice of our predecessors and actually put human health ahead of short-term profit, actually governing this province with a holistic understanding and respect for the ecosystems that sustain life, then perhaps we would not have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to chase poor decisions. Hopefully, we are learning from our mistakes.