Warning signs are on the Fraser
By RICHARD MORGAN
ONE sometimes wonders whether, 100 years from now, there won't be more salmon in England's River Thames than in the mighty Fraser.
Such speculation isn't entirely idle.
With the recent retrieval of an Atlantic salmon (the first in 150 years) from a stretch of Thames water within metropolitan London, the British claimed, with justifiable pride, that the trend toward befoulment of their river fiinally had been reversed.
British Columbia appears still to be going in the old direction, with heedless dredging, dumping of effluents and increasing urbanization posing a formidable threat to the Fraser's role as the world's greatest salmon-producing river, as well as to the area's enormous agricultural potential.
Now, with the return of Social Credit to power, rumors about dam construction have been revived. No fewer than 26 proposals are being made for new or expanded developments in the Fraser delta area.
In a series of public lectures this spring, scientists at UBC's Westwater Research Centre placed the writing starkly on the wall.
Unchecked pollution over the next few decades will destroy the lower Fraser's rich productivity.
The levels at which some contaminants can seriously impair the normal body functions of fish are surprisingly low, Dr. Tom Northcote warned in February.
Establishment of a Greater Vancouver Regional District environment protection committee is a pressing need, declared Westwater director Irving Fox one month later.
Yet so far it has been" impossible to convince the GVRD that anything less than secondary treatment of sewage at its An-nacis Island plant is unthinkable.
These are the odds against the fish — and incidentally the background against which plans for the ambitious salmonid enhancement program are being laid — and it is by no means assured that the fish will win.
•
A recent article in the federal energy, mines and resources department quarterly Geos suggested that lessons learned about the effects of water diversion on sedimentation and estuarial
ecology in the lower Fraser, may have been learned too late.
The author, Hans George Classen, said that now, for the first time, the attention of geologists is trained not on methods to "tame" the Fraser but on the effects of past damning and dredging and jetty-building.
Only in the past 100 years has man disrupted the pattern of successive flooding and sedimentation which over the millenia has built the Fraser delta into one of the richest agricultural areas in the world.
Geologists have estimated that sediments carried by the river from its interior drainage basin amount to some 20 million tons annually, but until the early years of this century the river overflowed its low-lying banks each spring, depositing large quantities of sediments on what is now called the lower mainland.
Now, says Classen, ". . . the banks of the river are lined with dikes, and floods no longer deposit their loads of fertile mud and sand on Lulu Island and other parts of the delta. Where the river arms enter the Strait of Georgia long jetties reach out, channelling and controling the currents. Dredges are at work in the river itself, sucking from its bottom no less than four million tons of sediments each year . . .
"What with the vast amount of dredging in the river estuary, and with the jetties that prevent the sediment-laden river waters from spreading along the adjacent shores, sedimentation patterns have become disrupted, and lesser amounts of sand and silt are deposited along portions of the shoreline.
"A similar process is taking place south of the river delta, on a stretch of marshland between the (Roberts Bank) superport and the ferry terminal, which may be a vital habitat for local salmon.
"Here, too, the sedimentation budget, as geologists call it, shows a net loss: more sediment is being removed by the sea than is carried in by the river, whose effect is diminished by the causeways.
"There is evidence that the shoreline is retreating. The problem is complicated by the fact that this marsh is adjacent to an Indian reserve, whose residents hoped to make use of it for an economic development."
But will the current geological studies Classen describes end up only as more scientific tomes locked away in libraries?
Delivering his Westwater lecture in February, Dr. North-
cote confessed this fear, specifically in regard to ecological studies.
"To become so despondent, one has only to go through the massive reports of various biological surveys conducted every 20 years or so since the late eighties on the major rivers in the U.S. — the Illinois River for example.
"All those studies seemed to have done is to have provided a careful and rigorous documentation of river degradation. I cannot think of a more bitter experience than to see our work serve a similar function on the Fraser."
Crabs taken during research at Sturgeon Bank already have shown mercury levels 10 times those in crabs taken from undeveloped areas. Mercury concentrations in squawfish and prickly sculpins — not utilized commercially but species high in the lower Fraser food chain — have been found in excess of acceptable Canadian food standards.
There must be much more caution in the way waste materials are deposited, Northcote warned, and more knowledge gathered about their effects.
Immediate fish mortality is not necessarily the criterion. Low levels of pollution may not kill fish, but may considerably reduce the survival rate of young.
"Who notices if young salmon, slightly stunned by passing briefly through a small inflow of toxicant discharge on their downstream migration, cannot avoid so effectively the many predators awaiting them at the river mouth?" Northcote asked.
Fox says his proposed Greater Vancouver Regional District environment committee should be financed by an annual charge of between half a cent and one cent per thousand gallons discharged into the lower Fraser. He also proposes modification of discharge permits to include more information.
"Currently, applications for permits do not provide adequate information on the toxic materials used in production processes," he claims.
The statement seems like a polite way of repeating the contention former Richmond MLA Harold Steves made before the UFAWU annual convention this year: that the provincial Pollution Control Board is no more than a licensing agency for polluters.
Several hundred miles upstream, where Prince George may be favored over Kitimat as the site for a big interior steel
* Scientists are warning that unchecked pollution and heedless development along the Fraser can destroy the river's productivity within a few decades.
mill, fears are expressed that sulphur dioxide air discharges could impair water quality and destroy the river's salmon-bearing potential.
Studies conducted in northern Ontario lakes downwind of the International Nickel Company
smokestacks in Sudbury showed that literally hundreds of thousands of acres of lake had been rendered unfit for trout, pike and pickerel because the admixture of sulphur dioxide had formed dilute solutions of sulphurous acid.
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THE FISHERMAN — MAY 7, 1976/5