Thirty years of organizing still hasn't protected the forests or the drinking water.
by Delores Broten
Entering the Slocan Valley in British Columbia's west Kootenays, after the drive along the "progressive clearcuts" and trashed and haltered lakes of the Arrow Lakes hydroelectric system, is like entering a magic corridor. Spectacular scenery and the large, clean, unmolested lake, bordered by numerous camp grounds, makes the valley corridor seem like a refuge. Halfway down the Valley, the signs of clearcuts on the west side are replaced by the deep green of Valhalla Wilderness Park.
Of any place in BC, this is where local communities are most prepared for the change to ecologically sensitive logging.
People who live in the country know where their water comes from, and in the Slocan, they understand it comes from the mountain streams above them and it must be protected from sediment.
After almost twenty years of community education by the Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance and the Valhalla Wilderness Society, most of the 5,000 folks in the valley know an awful lot about the nature of the soils in their valley and on the mountains above. They understand the result of the decay of stabilizing tree roots years after clearcutting, and the shifting of huge masses of water in the subsoils.
They've felt the landslides –1,300 of them over 30 years in a 75 kilometre circle around the village of New Denver, some natural, most caused by clearcutting and logging roads — seen the houses destroyed, and they drive by slide sites every day. They know from experience these slopes are fragile, and they know the Ministry of Forests (MoF) scientific assessment agrees. In fact, one 1997 injunction against blockading residents and allies at Perry Ridge was eventually thrown out of court by the presiding judge, when he discovered that the ministry had omitted from evidence its own studies on the high risks of landslides and danger to life, property and water sources. By then, of course, the forest defenders had served their jail time and been released. After her arrest at New Denver that year, Eloise Charet had undergone a 55-day hunger strike. The logging plans have not been changed.
The Perry Ridge residents in 1997 were only taking their turn in what now have become yearly protests, as every year roads are extended into the main valley and over the rushing streams from which residents get their water. The Slocan was the scene of the most intense civil disobedience, as measured by the number of arrests, in BC protest history in 1991, only surpassed by the internationally-backed Clayoquot protest later that decade. Those arrests took place over the Hasty and Vevey Creeks watersheds, flash points again now in the summer of 2000. The residents' new flyer repeats the constant themes from the Slocan: "Don't sacrifice our drinking water to industrial logging. We ask for responsible and democratic government."
The Valley has been the scene of almost endless attempts to gain some control over the resource extraction on the hills overhead. In 1974 Corky Evans, now New Democratic Party (NDP) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the region and a member of Cabinet, was coordinator of the Slocan Valley Community Forest Management Project, seeking inclusion of the Slocan Valley people in the decision making process, and a community forest. In the mid-1980s, the Slocan Valley's unique multi-government Land Use Plan, which included private land, was defeated by "Can the Plan" opponents. At the time, Evans was a Director with the Regional District, BC's equivalent of county government. In the 1991 election, the environmentalists of the Slocan campaigned for Evans and the NDP. But their trust was to be shattered.
In the mid 1990s, members of the Slocan Valley Watershed Alliance attended the West Kootenay-Boundary Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) land use negotiations. Anne Sherrod of the Valhalla Wilderness Society participated in the Implementation Process for the local Slocan Valley CORE. She thought the environmentalists and the watersheds had a deal which would protect the whole central Slocan Valley with a Special Management Zone. "It was announced by the government and promised in the pretty brochure," she said, but during the Implementation Strategy Process, "The sophistries and manipulations were out of this world, and by the time it was over, there was no Special Management Zone left."
Popular and strong-minded Valhalla Wilderness Society leader Colleen McCrory joined the ranks of the Green Party. Candidate Andy Shadrack, a local college instructor and former NDP strategist, got 11% of the vote in the next election. The bitter division between MLA Evans and the eco-sensitive residents of the Slocan has repercussions which will impact the up coming provincial election, but few in the NDP seem aware of the abyss which yawns underfoot as surely as the landslides perched overhead in the Slocan.
Nonetheless, one thing was salvaged from the talk-and-log disaster of CORE, and that was MoF computer data. Local resident and world-renowned ecoforester Herb Hammond of the Silva Forest Foundation drew up an alternative forestry plan for the Valley. The Silva Plan, as any rational person would expect, allows sensitive logging both in the back hills and the Valley, but calls for a significant drop in the Allowable Annual Cut and an increase in value-added secondary industry. An Angus Reid poll revealed up to 97% approval in the Valley of the principles behind the plan.
The Silva Plan was released in August 1996 with the support of the Sinixt First Nations, all the residential watershed groups and Valhalla Wilderness Society, and the village councils of New Denver and Silverton. McCrory says in her vigorous way that government officials promised a meeting with Cabinet to discuss the proposal but, "Four days later, all these representatives learned that the people they represent have no rights alongside corporate giant Slocan Forest Products." The logging permits were signed within a month. The landslides and the blockades continued.
So why are the steep and unstable slopes of the Slocan still being roaded and cut? Why has reason not prevailed and a compromise such as a Community Forest been brokered? Why are residents of community after community consulting their consciences and then marshalling in the early morning for ritual self-sacrifice by arrest and frequent imprisonment? Why are young people in increasing numbers anchoring themselves in concrete or Tree-Sitting, and calling in help from other watersheds, during the "Summer of Solidarity"? What is the moral and ethical crisis revealed here in the Slo••• can Valley?
Anne Sherrod of the Valhalla Wilderness Society thinks the answer is simple. "The government refuses to reduce the Annual Allowable Cut even though they know we're running out of wood," she says. The central Slocan Valley must stay in the calculations for the Allowable Annual Cut, she thinks, because there is little timber left on the back hills. But, says Sherrod, it's an "illusionary cut." Even the central corridor would be logged out in a very short time since Valhalla Park protects a little timber and much of the rest is immature, due to a history of fires 100 years ago.
Forest Watch activist Craig Pettitt points out the power of Slocan Forest Products, which holds half of the Valley in its forest licenses. The company has grown to one of the biggest players in BC logging. The trees of the central Slocan, with a projected cut of 890,000 cubic metres over the next ten years, 25,430 truckloads, are worth a little corporate aggravation. "At a very conservative estimate," says Pettitt, "they'd be worth $63 million dollars."
Silva Forest Foundation's Susan Hammond agrees that the power of the hungry mill in the village of Slocan maintains a grip on a portion of the population. But Hammond also points out that the making of solutions comes down to people. There are long-standing personal conflicts within the Valley, and MLA Evans has yet to show leadership working within the system for an environmental solution.
Further, says Hammond, Slocan Forest Products does not have the corporate culture, or visionary leaders which would allow it to seek the "eco" compromises trumpeted by MacMillan Bloedel on the coast before it was sold to US giant Weyerhaeuser. Nor is there any market campaign suggesting to the company that they need to negotiate. Hammond also notes that the 5,000 residents of the valley are spread out, and are currently forced to fight creek by creek.
Despite this paradigm of colonial control and raw resource extraction, with raw exercise of power, the residents of the Slocan are still seeking peaceful resolution. They have created the Slocan Valley Accord, a statement of unity signed by a wide range of groups, from the newly-formed Planet Earth EcoRegion Society (PEERS) at the south end of the valley to the Sinixt Nation.
This July the organizations wrote to Premier Ujjal Dosanjh seeking a Memorandum of Understanding for high-powered negotiations to implement the Silva Plan, with a moratorium on road building and logging to January 2001, and with an understanding that the Allowable Annual Cut will be lowered and Slocan Forest Products tenure removed from the forests of the Slocan River Watershed.
If this too proves as fruitless as all the other initiatives of the last twenty or thirty years, will the residents of the Slocan Valley finally admit defeat? "No," says Anne Sherrod, shaking her head in surprise, "we will never give up. We live here."
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[From WS August/September 2000]