It’s time that landowners who live along the Chemainus River have a say in how flooding issues are being handled there.
A couple of them, Colin James and Don Ellingham, spoke to North Cowichan’s council on the issue at its meeting on Sept. 4, and their frustration with the process was almost palpable.
Both landowners said they have lost many acres of their land to the river as repeated floods over the years have caused erosion and swept the land away, and they expect to lose a lot more property unless something is done that actually deals with the problem instead of the band-aid approach that has been taken so far.
“Right now, we’re just spinning wheels in the mud,” Ellington told council.
The Chemainus River has received attention from all levels of government, particularly after the atmospheric river event in 2021 that caused significant damage to homes, farms, and businesses in the area.
Studies performed for the province, Cowichan Valley Regional District, North Cowichan, and the Halalt First Nation concluded there is a need for better management of the watershed and work in the river to reduce the damage caused by flooding.
No doubt a lot of expensive work has and is being done to deal with the problem, including a $5.9-million project over the summer that was paid for by the province, to restore watercourses along the river that were hard hit by the flooding event in 2021.
The work already completed includes sediment removal on the left side of the channel downstream of the Chemainus River bridge that was finished in the fall of 2022, and sediment removal upstream of the E&N bridge and the construction of a one-kilometre long flood barrier, both completed in the fall of 2023.
But the landowners, as well as many other stakeholders in the river, know that logging operations upstream on private forestry lands have contributed significantly to the problems with logs and sediments in the watershed that are jamming up waterways and eating away at the riverbanks, and until something is done about that, all the work that has been and is being done on the river is pretty fruitless.
In June, North Cowichan’s CAO Ted Swabey acknowledged that there are no easy solutions to dealing with flooding issues along the river.
“Just to go in and remove the debris is like playing whack-a-mole, which may have some benefits, but until you actually deal with the root cause of why we’re getting the debris, it just comes back,” Swabey said at the time.
But Swabey did say at the meeting on Sept. 4 he believes that, after years of North Cowichan and other local governments advocating for changes in how forest lands on Vancouver Island are managed, there will be some significant changes made in the near future that could help deal with the issues around the Chemainus River.
But, like most bureaucratic processes, that’s likely some time down the road.
In the meantime, landowners like James and Ellington, who are being drastically impacted by the incessant floods that are eating away their properties, are adamant that they have a say in mitigation efforts right now before they lose any more of their lands.
Currently, the Halalt and the province are primarily responsible for the work on the river, and the only way the landowners can have a say is through North Cowichan.
But that may change soon as well.
Swabey noted that the property owners want a voice at the table, and acknowledged that they probably should.
“They have a lot of knowledge and history and want to be involved in developing some of the solutions, and that’s understandable and we’ll work towards that,” he said.
Things seem to be slowly turning in the right direction to deal with the issues on the river, but we need proper solutions to finally fix the problems, and that can’t happen fast enough.
And let's let people like James and Ellington have a seat at the table.
