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LETTER: Alberni Valley’s water can’t withstand logging practices

A logger’s thoughts from the stump
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To the Editor,

I may be just a dumb old logger sitting out here on my second stump, below the mudslide as I watch it washing away and destroying acres of my property and putting many more at risk in future slides and washouts.

I think the first stump I sat on in earlier days and washouts made its way to the Stamp River via Beaver Creek itself which enters the Stamp River just above the Beaver Creek water intake. That old stump is probably resting on the intake pipes, but it does not matter anymore because the headwaters and watersheds for the Beaver Creek water system have no potable water.

There has been no visible water for three years above ground on that whole area (Block 141) since Timberwest under the direction of the Liberals created the Private Lands Council; the same council that does not require logging plans for buildings, roads or logging in watersheds.

This was the Liberal government’s idea of logging our forest lands with no concerns for our environment or wildlife. Their main concern is making the most money before they get stopped. Hopefully they will be held accountable for their greed and dishonesty to the taxpayers.

It has been a very long time since anything positive has happened in this Alberni Valley. Last week I was on the way home on Cameron Road where a neighbour’s house was burning down and to my amazement there were all five fire departments with their very well trained crews on the scene. This dumb old logger has been saying for years that this Valley should all be one entity. This valley does not need two bureaucracies in charge duplicating each other.

It is just a matter of time when this Valley will have to get our water from Great Central Lake because the city’s watershed in the China Creek basin will suffer the fate of Beaver Creek’s water. That’s what happens with the Private Lands Council in charge of logging practices in watersheds.

Wayne Crowley,

Port Alberni