Raising the weir a no-brainer
Dear CVRD chairman and board:
I’m thrilled a public advisory group of locals has urged raising the Cowichan Lake weir to help preserve Cowichan River flows year-round.
Raising the aging weir for public and environmental uses has been a no-brainer for years.
During the past decade, river flows have fallen as human and nature’s needs have risen, along with global temperatures.
Local leaders discussed raising the weir with provincial and federal agents who have largely failed to act on saving flows in our salmon-bearing heritage river.
All stakeholders, from Cowichan Tribes elders and river permit-holder Catalyst corporation, to Valley councillors and fishers support raising the weir to capture spring flow volumes for use during our now-annual drought conditions.
Every summer, low flows threaten our salmon-spawning season until Mother Nature kindly saves our river with fall rains.
The fly in the weir-raising ointment has been lake property owners who believe — apparently wrongly — that raising the weir will flood their yards.
But government studies project a rise of just several inches of yard flooding if more water is stored behind the weir controlled by Catalyst’s two provincial-flow permits.
Granting the Crofton pulp mill that river control in the 1950s was arguably foolish.
Still, Catalyst executives back river stakeholders regarding weir storage to supply its pulp-and-paper mill employing some 200 folks.
Let’s hope our local leaders now enact the advisory group’s logical recommendations to raise the weir 30 centimetres as an interim step toward higher storage levels in the coming years of water-crises management.
Peter W. Rusland
Duncan