Chilliwack – CodeBlue is a citizens initiative to secure and sustain BC’s fresh water sources. They along with the BC Wildlife Federation have expressed renewed concern over new efforts for gravel mining on the Vedder River and the disruption to fish stocks.
From CodeBlue BC: A gravel mining project in Chilliwack’s Vedder River is back in the works and threatens salmon habitat in the Heart of the Fraser River.
You might recall — or you may have personally sent a letter to the province — around this time last year on this very same project. Proposed as a means to reduce local flood risk, the gravel extraction was cancelled in 2023 because of concerns around the impacts on pink salmon, who return to tributaries in the Fraser in large numbers in odd years.
The project has now been revived. Among the red flags:
– Gravel, vital for spawning salmon, has already been mined extensively in the Vedder and the amount that this project will remove is unprecedented.
– The science that supports gravel mining for reducing flood risk is lacking.
From our perspective, there are more effective ways to reduce flood risk that don’t harm wild salmon. One good example is a current project building wetlands along the Vedder. The Buxton Wetlands project that broke ground last month is creating salmon habitat while reducing local flood risk. That’s a win-win in our books.
From the B.C. Wildlife Federation : The B.C. Wildlife Federation does not support the extraction of gravel from the Upper Section of the Vedder River, which already has a gravel deficit from decades of over-extraction. Development decisions that affect our rivers must not destroy vital salmon habitat. Especially, one that carelessly aims to destroy crucial pink salmon habitat, it is simply unacceptable.
This commercial aggregate harvesting project as proposed is unprecedented in scale and carries significant risk of damage to salmon rearing habitat, disturbing eggs and larvae, and has potential to erode the stream bed. The proposal to remove 360,000 cubic metres of gravel will have untold consequences on pink salmon spawning for years to come. It is misleading to represent this project as a method of flood control.
There has never been a sediment removal this large in the history of Chiliwack. The BCWF Executive Director Jesse Zeman, said it best, “The fish really can’t afford this.”. Jesse and BCWF President David Lewis have sent a joint letter to the Minister of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship Nathan Cullen, and the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy George Heyman. They recognize and applaud last year’s cancellation of the gravel removal in the Vedder River, but are concerned for the return of the removal, along with the suddenly enlarged scale. The Vedder River is already over-extracted. While requesting to meet with both the ministers, Jesse and David concluded their letter with “We urge you to cancel all gravel mining in critical salmon habitat.”
