Editor:
Re: MLA presses provincial gov't for long-term dredging plan, Oct. 31
While not wishing to diminish the need for ongoing dredging to any degree whatsoever, there are many overlooked and unheralded costs directly related to muddy silt in the Fraser River.
For instance, without prioritizing:
What is the cost to industry to filter silt from river water for use in industrial processing such as for cooling purposes?
What is the effect on sawmill equipment handling silt laden logs?
How many deaths result from rescuers being unable to find victims in the muddy waters?
What is the cost to boat owners for premature failure of engine cooling water pumps and valves?
What is the social cost for not having hundreds of miles of river banks free of mud?
What are the costs of unwanted effluents and other contaminant being camouflaged within muddy waters?
What is the effect on fish having to swim to their clean clear spawning beds through hundreds of kilometres of gill-choking muddy water?
No doubt there are many other costs that could be added and perhaps there are even some benefits such as employment for dredge operators and an inexpensive source of preload material for construction sites. Going back a few decades to when I was in elementary school, I recall having to draw maps of Cordillera regions in Canada and learn the significance of the Western Cordillera and its effect on the province and the Fraser River drainage system.
Having had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout B.C. and from some readings it would appear that silt, as we know it, is fallout from volcanoes eons ago and the cordilleran effects accumulating in the area where it is picked up by the Nechako River for delivery by its bigger partner, the Fraser, to again accumulate, this time in the Fraser estuary.
All of the above suggests that while there is an ongoing need to spend huge amounts of money on the river in the long-term, the best place to spend that money may not be in the estuary but upstream at the source of the silt via erosion control.
P. Nairn McConnachie
