From my perspective, I think it's the cavalier attitude of the senior management toward the Fraser River. The Fraser River has been sort of treated separately in terms of its habitat values. It has not been recognized in terms of its extraordinary fish community, so it has been treated very separately. And because of the intense politicization of gravel removal by the provincial government, the local government and DFO, the process has been sort of subverted.
We know how to take gravel out from rivers for flood protection. There's a watershed nearby that actually flows into the Fraser, called the Vedder-Chilliwack, and it's a very transparent process. It's a very iterative process. The technical guys go in and measure how much gravel has come in from the previous two years. Pink salmon spawn every two years, so we always do it in the off year when pink salmon are not adversely affected. So we measure how much gravel has come in, we conduct a hydraulic model to determine where the surface elevation of the water has increased to the point at which it's endangering dikes, then once we've figured that out the technical staff go in and figure out which locations gravel should come out. It's then taken out and the decision is based solely on technical advice.
The direction at the political and executive level is to maintain flood protection, and the politicians or the executive or senior managers don't interfere in terms of where, how, and how much gravel should come out. In the case of the Fraser, it's totally different. It's “this is where it's going to come out and these are the guys who are going to take it out”.
